'There are some 'erotic thrillers' that have no illusions as to what they are. With endless sex, idiotic dialogue and very poor production costs, these are the films that say 'yes, I am a tasteless, laughable, mindless erotic thriller, but that erotic thriller is what I want to BE.'

And then you have things like 'Sins of the Night', which just can't decide. We have the extremely cliched title and the masses of sex throughout the film, and yet it also wants to be something else. It has a vaguely complicated plot and there are moments where you suspect the director was trying to be clever. If you asked him he'd probably describe this film as 'a romantic psychological action thriller, with some sex in just to add gritty realism'. Then he would ask you if you were ready to order yet, and you'd ask for the Extra Value Meal.

Anyway, this film is primarily about a rough, grizzled, greasy-haired insurance investigator by the name of - brace yourselves - Jack Nietzsche! Ignoring the fact that 'Jack' is the most appallingly often-used name for a hero, where the hell did Nietzsche come from? I guess they just randomly picked something out of an encyclopaedia, so I suppose we should all be grateful he wasn't called Jack Nitrous Oxide.

The first time we see our hero he's sneaking outside someone's window looking in with his big camera, spying on some wheelchair-bound hot blonde woman wheeling around her apartment. He takes pictures of her as she answers the door to someone, then when they've gone away, gets out of her wheelchair and opens a cupboard, where some handsome bloke was waiting. Don't be too surprised, in these films sexual partners just tend to emerge from the woodwork. Anyway, they start getting lively, our greasy hero takes his photos, throughout the sex we hear constant heavy breathing as if Darth Vader's hiding behind the curtain, and it all drags on for approximately three decades, two of which are spent with the focus on an extreme close-up of the girl's boobs. We are left with many questions on our mind, such as 'who was that idiot woman?', 'what was the point of that sex scene?' and 'why am I watching this when Jurassic Park 2 is on the other side?'. The last question we can answer; because nude women beat nude dinosaurs every time. As for the other two, we must wait until after we see some weird balding guy sitting in some office and staring at a photo of some woman for another three decades.

Once again I found it impossible to find stills for this film, so this time we'll
have some pictures of kittens instead.

Your friend and mine Greasy Jack Nietzsche is next seen confronting the fake disabled woman in a restaurant - and even if he hadn't taken photos of her shagging then turning up in a public place minus her wheelchair would probably have given the game away - and he offers to forget the whole thing if she consents to a shag. Ooh! I don't call that very heroic! Neither is it so when he gets a faraway look in his eye and places a hand on her boob. Next we see the bloke in the office staring at the photo again, but now he's comparing it with another one, and we learn that the name of the woman in the photo is 'Roxanne Flowers'. It kind of sounds like a name a twee little girl would give her dolly.

We see a brief scene of some bloke we've never seen before getting into bed with a similarly inclined woman and trying to get his end in, failing miserably, and we cut back to a post-coitus Greasy Nietzsche. Now we learn that he's an insurance investigator, as he goes to work - for the bloke with the photos - and explains the situation with the thick blonde woman. "I'm on top of her," he says. I hear someone weeping at this point, but then realise it's actually me, despairing for the terrible dialogue in this film. Anyway, Greasy Jack is sent to find this Roxanne Flowers woman who is suspected of being an insurance fraudster. She's also hot, but that's probably because ugly women don't exist.

It is clear from this point on that they're trying to make a sort of stereotypical private eye flick here. We see a montage of Greasy walking the streets surrounded by neon signs while a very Raymond Chandler monologue of his plays over some dodgy jazz. We see Jack talk to a few passers-by in the streets, one of whom is dressed as an obvious pimp and another who looks just like the Omagh Bomber, then his boss's secretary, who I think was stoned at the time, tries to slither all over him. The greasy man is uninterested, but then promises to shag her if she makes him a pie. I suppose that's on his price list. One pie for full sex and a box of Kipling chocolate slices for cunnilingus.

Another thing I noticed at around this point was that, whenever action takes place indoors, the characters have these very weird vertical shadows over their faces. No-one ever seems to want to turn the lights on, either.

Anyway, since we haven't had any action in a while, Greasy Joe phones up some woman we've never seen before, they flirt stupidly, then we cut to them shagging. There's more heavy breathing, and they do this weird spooning position which I believe would be physically impossible without a two-foot penis with a hinge in the middle. Also the women in this film, when being rogered, tend to bare their teeth and open and close their mouths all the time, which I think is supposed to make them look like their enjoying themselves immensely, but looks more like they're eating imaginary Mars bars. Anyway, once the shag's finished, we go back to the montage of walking the streets, lighting cigarettes, dodgy monologue and crappy jazz.

Next thing we know, Greasy Joe comes to a brothel. I didn't follow the plot of this film very closely, so I'm not sure why he turns up there. Then again, it is a brothel, and this is that sort of film, so I guess it's not too hard to understand. The owner of the establishment shows up, or maybe she was the receptionist, and the Grease Monster starts leering over her. She's having none of it, and eventually he buggers off to talk to his friend, who happens to be a barman. Oh, jeez. All he needs now is the trenchcoat and fedora. Anyway, turns out this Roxanne Flowers girl is married to some bigwig crime leader or something, which probably means Greasy is going to shag her and get on his bad side or something, or maybe he'll take his friend's advice and forget the whole matter. See if you can guess which of those two plots transpires. I'll give you a clue. It's not the second one.

We go back to Jack's office with the bars over the face and the bad lighting, and the cagey brothel owner turns up dressed like one of her staff, much to the disgust of the pie-making receptionist. We get a lot of needlessly lengthy shots of this woman's body, and her skirt the size of four stamps, while she alternately acts cross at the Greasemeister for 'showing up at my home unannounced' (I wonder if she knows she lives in a brothel?) and flirts with him hugely. Lot of mixed signals coming off this woman.

Anyway, for some reason Greasy Nietzsche meets Roxanne Flowers in the bar his friend works in (because there is only ever one bar in these films) and they flirt some more. She had enormous teeth, which kept making me think of 'Tubbs' from The League of Gentlemen, and basically tells the whole plot. Pity I wasn't paying any attention. Anyway, she goes off back to her evil crime boss hubby and Greasy follows her, watching her plight through a window. Evil crime boss makes her take all her clothes off and crawl towards him. Greasy is sickened, and turns his head away, but of course he doesn't actually leave. He only does when the evil bloke starts to get his kit off, so I guess he wanted to spare us the sight of evil bloke's evil willy. He goes back to his boss who informs him that he's being taken off the case, and then gloats over how Greasy is his and has to do everything he says.

"Oh god," said someone I was watching this film with. "They're drawing parallels. It's actually trying to be clever."

There are no kittens in this film. Trixie, above, had no comment on this matter.

Moving hastily on, Greasy Nietzsche comes to the receptionist's house for his allotted pie and shag, but she's drunk off her tits. He eats one mouthful of pie, says 'I haven't eaten like this in ages!' and says he has to leave. The receptionist gets shirty and cross, so he buggers off to Roxanne Flowers to shag her instead. The camera stays on her tits for three long decades, then they change position, and another three decades of heavy breathing and imaginary Mars bar eating pass.

Loads of stupid things now happen. The boss bloke shags Roxanne but makes her pretend to be his dead wife, the boss bloke fires Greasy because he's an even bigger wanker and didn't want the competition, then Greazsche broods for a while before shagging Roxanne again (she's the village bicycle; everyone's had a ride) and boss bloke tells on him to the evil husband. Next thing we know Greasy's got a contract out on him and his straight-laced barman friend is telling him to move to Tijuana, but he can't do that, 'cos he don't speak foreign.

It turns out at this point, through the medium of explanatory scenes, that Roxanne is actually the evil one, conspiring with the brothel owner/receptionist/janitor woman, who share a toast to their brilliant plan and the stupid men. Then they laugh evilly, just to put the icing on the cake. Roxanne blackmails boss bloke into murdering evil hubby to get at his insurance money (there's always insurance money involved), so when the two conspiring evil lesbians slither all over each other in evil husband's house boss bloke comes in and shoots the big tosser. Then Greasy Nietzsche, whose turn it is for the family brain cell, turns up, having figured it all out.

Boss man shoots him dead, which just goes to show that not even the family brain cell can help us sometimes. Then the evil lesbians shoot the boss man dead and start gloating! But then it turns out Greasy was wearing a bulletproof vest! Of course he was! The evil lesbians try to pay him off with the insurance money, but he's wise to their wicked ways now. Then they say they're going to tell the police he did it all, and look smug. So Greasy Jack thinks for a minute and says "Your fingerprints are on that gun, and I was never here". Then he leaves, the evil lesbians not even trying to stop him, and that's it. On reflection that seems rather anti-climactic.

Go! Ratings! Go!

Johnny Law Rating: 8/10
Technically Greasy Nietzsche is an insurance investigator, not a cop or a private eye, but he fits into the stereotype of the latter so cleanly he no doubt counts as one.

Evil Lesbians Rating: 10/10
Score! It's a perfect example of the classic erotic thriller tale of evil women seducing stupid men and turning out to be conspiring with their fellow sisters.

Vanishing Clothes Rating: 7/10
Enough clothes vanish in this film to keep a whole football team nice and warm in the Arctic Circle.

Eating the Breast Rating: 7/10
This film has a fixation on breasts, so of course they get stuffed down throats at every opportunity. That's when they're not filling the screen for three decades, of course.

'It's Not Porn, Honest' Rating: 5/10
Tricky. There's an enormously convoluted plot and, as mentioned above, it does try to be clever, but there's sex almost every ten minutes and numerous gratuitous titty and pubic hair shots. Call it an even five to help the books balance.

Overall Erotic Thriller Rating: 8/10
If Sins of the Night was a person, it would be a stripper/prostitute in a seedy underworld bar who keeps saying 'one day I'll be a movie star and a household name' with glittery stars in her eyes, but chokes to death on spunk at the age of nineteen.

Quality Rating: 25%

One-Word Summary: 'Greasy'

updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links