Mystery DVD Club No 20: Altered Love

Kevin Pocock

Take on mystery DVD. Send it to unsuspecting review. Hope to dig up a gem. That's the plan, anyway...

Published on Sep 29, 2009

There's a point in Altered Love, starring Bob Poole, Kim Kilway and James Hansen Prince, where Bob Poole utters the following, immortal line: "I've seen many a great man get swept away by this rarefied atmosphere - the power and the glory." Now, it might be the most inappropriate line in the context of the quality of the film ever, but presumably it was also the reason why, at the moment Poole spoke it, I choked on a fruit fly.

It's completely understandable, of course. Rather than subject itself to the multiple visions of atrocity spewing forth from my screen, and obviously having been driven mad by terrifying sound-bites the trio were - I can only assume - severely blackmailed into reciting, this humble fly sought to do me a good turn.

No longer able to stand such an existence as being stuck in the same room as Altered Love's circus of artistic horrors, one living being to another, it sought to help at least further my energy to stomach the title by increasing my protein intake by even the smallest of small amounts. Said fly must surely have hoped that it was doing the one thing for me that it could during 91.25 minutes of sheer dross to ensure that at least one of us made it through. To that fly then, I give my full thanks, for without its tiny spark of energy, I doubt I would have made it to the finish of this maze of utter miserableness.

The trio of characters in question are placed on the storybore, I mean board, like so: Steve Walters (Bob Poole), an investor of some sort that I care not a bit of wee about, becomes infatuated with a med student called Tina Andrews (played by Kim Kilway). Unfortunately for Andrews, Walters is a man who always gets what he wants. Even more unfortunately for Andrews, her current boyfriend, Jack, (played by Hansen Prince) is a complete and utter psycho who spends most of his time either (a) in a morgue, (b) making various vague and incomprehensible threats to the camera, or (c) being the schizophrenic with alter egos enough to camp The Village People into submission.

'A rock and a hard place' doesn't cover it. Andrews is caught between the horrid terror of Poole (apparently telepathically) invoking her to pick up a phone, which doesn't actually ring, and the laugh your lungs through your nose abomination that is Jack. You know he actually loses a game of 'judo throws' with an inanimate object as he chases Kim. (My hat goes off to you, Mr Coffee Table, Jedi Master. You lie in plain sight, never moving, and when your enemy least expects it, do nothing at all).

If you want the actual plot, it's something to do with the above, but with the added details that Steve Walters' ex-wife, whom he may or may not have murdered - we're never definitely told - was called Marissa. Kim Andrews is the spit of this Marissa and that explains his obsession. It doesn't explain away a fit-inducingly poor 'lovers break' at Walters' ranch which stems from Jack - Jesus Christ, how did it take so long? - finally scaring into the arms of Walters.

Like father like son then, because Jack Reddick is Steve Walters' son. Bothered? No, neither am I. This film is so full of holes that it took me half of it to realise that Walters was slightly insane and kept talking to his dead wife's picture, rather than his secretary or someone standing out of camera shot. How and why is his ex-wife dead? Is he actually mad? To be completely honest, I just don't fucking care.

Towards the end, some wiser than-wise PI is hired by Jack, before it comes out about his father being...his father. When he tells Tina, she jumps in a car and rushes to Steve, but conspires to escape them both by having a car crash. With the barely kneaded, let alone half-baked plot drawing to a close, Steve throws his son against a hospital ward wall with such force it knocks him out. He then pulls a tube from the incapacitated Tina's arm, inserts it into one of Jack's veins and blows. The film mercifully ends and it was at this point I realised I really had given an hour and a half of my life to a piss-poor excuse for an addition to the small screen.

But then, a selfless fruit fly gave its life.