American Nightmare (1983)

Dir: Don McBrearty

Pianist Eric (Lawrence Day) returns home after an absence of two years. He's been brought back due to a distressing letter from his sister Isabelle (Alexandra BAYWATCH Paul) asking for help. Unable to locate her he begins to investigate her disappearance and learns that her sordid world since leaving home at the age of sixteen involves stripping, prostitution and blackmail. When Isabelle's room mate Andrea (Claudia EDGE OF SANITY Udy) is found dead in the bath tub of their run down apartment, Eric and a second room mate Louise (Lora RISKY BUSINESS Staley) team up to find Isabelle. In their way of getting to the truth is a killer who likes to slash a straight razor across the throat of anyone who had anything to do with Isabelle.

Along the way we meet Detective Skyler (Michael Ironside) who is better at pointing the finger at red herrings than finding Isabelle, Fixer (Michael SCANNERS III Copeman) who was Isabelle's pimp, the wealthy Hamilton Blake (Tom SCANNERS II Harvey) who as father to Isabelle and Eric pushed both of them away and now runs the charity Uni Save, and Tony  (Neil THE INCUBUS Dainard) who is the host of the upcoming televised Uni Save 24 hour marathon pledge drive and Hamilton's right hand man. And there's lots of T&A. A good chunk of the film is spent at the strip club the room mates work at.

Every film should have a topless juggler

The Canadian AMERICAN NIGHTMARES has a copyright of 1981 but was not released until 1983. A gap of that length often is a warning sign that a film has issues that kept it from distribution shortly after completion but not so in this case. AMERICAN NIGHTMARES is a decent thriller augmented with lazy FX nods to the burgeoning slasher genre. The villain of the film is easy enough to work out especially considering the red herrings are only on film to be red herrings; i.e. the boyfriend of a stripper who is perpetually angry that his woman works at the strip club. The script is also predictable in that wealthy, cultivated Eric falls for Louise, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks; there's even a de rigueur 80's sex scene. But there's enough mystery in the two leads tracking down what happened to Isabelle that it kept my interest.

Location shots always grab my interest, especially ones of a big city from over thirty years ago, and I did get a kick out of seeing TRUCK TURNER on a theatre marquee as the two leads ran around downtown Toronto.

** out of ****