Kiss and Kill (4 Stars)

This is another erotic thriller from Dean McKendrick. The DVD cover photo that I've reproduced above has nothing to do with the film, but you have to admit that it looks sexy.

Katy Fletcher is a bored housewife. On the face of it she has everything. She's married to the owner of a large chemical company. She lives in a big mansion and has more than enough money. However, she's sad because her husband has no time for her. He's constantly flying from one part of the world to another, and when he returns home he has no time to have sex with her. All he can do is grab a few hours sleep before his next flight.

As is to be expected, Katy has trouble remaining faithful under such circumstances. She meets a man called Mark in a bar and has a one-night stand. Just one night. She loves her husband, so she doesn't want to carry on. But in this case once was too much. Her sexual encounter with the man was filmed, and she's blackmailed. Mark and his girlfriend Megan have already blackmailed other women. Megan says that if Katy doesn't pay $6000 her husband will find out what she did.

Let me give my readers a piece of advice. If you're ever blackmailed in any way, don't pay. You can't trust blackmailers. If you pay them you have no way of knowing they will honour their bargain, and it's possible they will demand more. You can pretend that you will pay to stall them, so that the police will have time to act. But don't pay. Never.

Katy should have listened to my advice. She pays the money, but a few days later Megan demands more. She's caught in a trap with no way out. Things escalate. Mark no longer trusts Megan, so he asks Katy to kill her in exchange for deleting the evidence of her affair. No woman could possibly be stupid enough to agree, could she?

This is the best of Dean McKendrick's erotic thrillers so far. I can only hope that many more will follow.

I almost forgot to mention that the film shows a newspaper article about a suicide case concerning a former victim of the blackmailers. What's interesting is that the article repeats the same paragraph five times. As if that's not enough, the text is repeated again below the centre page advertisement. That's sloppy.