Never Talk to Strangers focuses on a court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Sarah Taylor (de Mornay) who-- in deference to that painfully overused cinema-shrink stereotype-- is thoroughly more whacked-out than any of her patients (if she actually *had* patients!). Taylor is evaluating an indicted serial rapist, Max Cheski (Harry Dean Stanton), with multiple personality disorder. Meanwhile she runs into a former cop, Tony (Antonio Banderas) with a pony tail, a wall of tattoos on his arm, and a blatant rip-off of the loft apartment in Fatal Attraction, who takes Sarah to his House o' Lovin' for some overwrought and mildly entertaining sex scenes. Sarah at the same time is confronting her creep father (Len Cariou) and her friendly neighbor (Dennis Miller) who has a thing for her and-- drumroll-- suddenly someone seems to be stalking her. Wilted flowers are sent to her; her house is broken into; an electric heater nearly kills her in the bathtub; and, not to be outdone by Fatal Attraction's dead bunny scene, some poor cat winds up as a pawn in a death threat in a disgustingly exploitative scene. Sarah hires a PI to check up on Tony but he only seems to become more enigmatic as the film stumbles along. So how does the mystery unravel? Who's doing the stalking? I won't tell because, well, you'll figure it out anyway after the past 20 minutes.

This has to rank as one of the top 10 or 20 most awful scripts of the entire decade. It's got such zingers as (Tony speaking) "If you never talk to strangers, you'll never meet anyone new" and (Cheski) "The Buddhists have a saying. If you ever meet your master in the road, kill him." Yep. That's characteristic. The implausibility level is forehead-slapping. When Sarah finds her apt broken into she does not call for help; no, she goes in and *takes a bath*. And the ending-- oh, my, it makes that resolution in Sliver seem like a cinematic masterpiece! The conclusion to this movie alone is so ridiculously idiotic, nonsensical, boring, poorly acted, incoherent, and abysmally accomplished that you will want to attack your TV set for having wasted your valuable time and money so appallingly.

I don't know about Peter Hall's films in general but he *cannot* direct a suspense film, at least certainly not this one. Everything seems jagged and forced. The musical score is awful, totally overdone. The cinematography is O.K.-- there are some nice outdoor scenes here. And the acting? Well, I genuinely like all 3 main actors here (de Mornay, Banderas, Miller) but this film makes you yearn to see *anything else* they've been in. De Mornay was wonderful back in Risky Business, but nothing works for her here; she cannot infuse any nuance into her part as the psychiatrist, and the juxtaposing of her scared-victim scenes with the loft-lovin' scenes fails. Miller is generally peripheral, which if anything is a good thing in this film; what scenes he is in, are laughable. And Banderas? He tries hard, honestly, but it's obvious that there is a mismatch between his talent (which is considerable) and the woefulness of the script. And that's the heart of the problem-- the script and the direction sink the actors before they had a chance to even remotely shine. So if you're looking for a suspense movie to check out, do yourself a favor-- rent Hitchcock, DePalma, Ron Howard, anybody-- but stay away from this.