Young, beautiful and ambitious, Katya Yarno (Diane Lane) leaves home for the bright lights of Pittsburgh where persistence lands her a job as a window dresser at Horne’s department store. Katya’s provocative, somewhat kinky shop window displays soon become the talk of the town, enticing customers while enraging others. Katya’s flagrant fantasies also arouse the unwanted interest of Jack Price (Michael Woods), an upscale psychopath whose respectable day job and domestic facade conceal a dangerously unhinged mind. Growing obsessed with Katya, he stalks her in secret, bombards her with threatening phone calls and even sneaks inside her apartment one night. His menacing behaviour drives poor Katya to the edge of sanity.
The Eighties saw the rise of the erotic thriller as a big box office draw sparked largely by Joe Eszterhas penned efforts like Jagged Edge (1986) although one could argue Richard Brooks got there first with Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). Removed from the seedy, grimy world of porn, these provided a gentrified, glossy outlet for the sexual fantasies of the more mainstream, supposedly upscale yuppie crowd, cloaked in the respectability of sub-Hitchcockian garb often with a healthy dose of moralising to boot. Fatal Attraction (1987) was the big breakout hit of the era, but some filmmakers set out to subvert this quixotically conservative genre.
Which brings us to Lady Beware, a flawed, occasionally kitsch yet psychologically intriguing and ultimately rather laudable erotic thriller directed by Karen Arthur, the woman behind the oddball, albeit similarly feminist inclined exploitation film The Mafu Cage (1978). With Diane Lane in the lead, you get more besides a beautiful woman to admire. You get a compelling nuanced and charismatic performance that transcends the film’s occasional misstep. There is an inescapable campiness inherent in the film, sporting the sort of go-getting gal-tries-to-make-it in-the-big city scenario that would have graced a musical forty years prior. Much like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance (1983), Katya is another of those struggling young heroines inexplicably able to afford an enormous apartment. Plus it is hard to stifle a laugh when she fantasizes a male mannequin comes alive to ravish her amidst much heaving, sweating and heavy breathing.
Nevertheless this remains a sincere and all too rare attempt to explore sexual fantasy as an important facet of the female psyche. The screenplay, written by prolific television scribe Susan Miller and collaborator Charles Zev Cohen, rightly asserts a woman has the right to express all facets of herself without being punished or persecuted. Hindered by some laughable dialogue (“I can fuck you right through this door”), Michael Woods’ overwrought portrayal of a creepy stalker escalates into embarrassment in some instances as when he invades Katya’s apartment to soap himself in her bathtub then dance half-naked in front of a mirror. If you can get past the concept of a psychotic gynaecologist and Woods’ mannered performance, Jack’s invasion of Katya's privacy and psyche does prove unsettling. He is an interestingly atypical screen psycho, married with a little girl (whom he even has dial Katya’s number during one threatening phone call!) and more conventionally handsome than the Katya’s ineffectual love interest, photojournalist Mac (Cotter Smith) who at least proves sympathetic to her fantasies.
The film proves especially interesting while detailing the effect Jack’s mind games have upon Katya’s psyche. She loses confidence in her fantasies, grows increasingly repressed, tormented and withdrawn and dresses less glamorously. Cocooning herself from the outside world she has a handyman bar every window in her apartment, reflecting her state of mind. Where the film trumps more reactionary erotic thrillers is in Katya’s realisation her imagination, the very thing that inflamed Jack, can also take him down. It refutes the idea raised by several characters less enamoured with the window displays that Katya deserves to suffer for her airing her sexual fantasies in public. Instead, her revenge proves far more satisfying than the usual showdown as she effectively traps the villain within the physical embodiment of her own psyche. The message of empowerment is very persuasive. As a thriller, Lady Beware is slow-moving though Arthur stages some suspenseful stalking scenes and the film undoubtedly delivers for Diane Lane fans. It certainly proves it is possible for a film to be ridiculous yet stimulating on a subtextual and psychological level at the same time.
