THE CRUSH (1993)

THE CRUSH (1993)

Tagline: He thought it was just a crush. He was dead wrong.

(Drama, Thriller, Now get out of my Van Halen t-shirt before you jinx the band and they break up) [R]

Bees won't bother you unless you bother them. Wasps are different. They're territorial and they're social.

In this one journalist Nick Eliot has recently started staying in the guest house where Liv and Cliff Forrester live. It doesn’t take long before their 14-year-old daughter Adrian develops an increasingly dangerous crush on Eliot. When he rejects her advances, she takes more and more drastic steps to ruin his life. 

This one comes into the Lolita sub-genre of thrillers. They are topically controversial so there aren’t a ton of them that get a lot of attention, but this movie did because it was at the dawn of Alicia Silverstone’s (CLUELESS) rise to massive stardom. She was only 15 when this movie came out but was emancipated to avoid having to deal with child labor laws. Nick in the movie plays a 28-year-old, so this is basically a jail bait situation. Even in the 80’s when things were a little more “loose” when it came to this stuff, this film would still have been considered controversial. There are a couple pretty tame nude scenes that were done by body doubles. The director actually based the film on his own life experience. Clearly, some of the details were changed, but the general idea was used including the guest house situation. 

When I was in high school I had a girl obsessed with me. So I have seen the “alter” type stuff because out of curiosity a friend and I went to her house before I knew what was going on just to hang out. Once there I saw that she had my name written hundreds of times with “I love you” on her bedroom wall. Literally covering the entire wall. I had her in art class and we really hadn’t talked much before she invited him and me over. She clearly wanted me to know, but things got even weirder when I got down to the bus stop going the other way and the bus stop seat and covering had “I love you” and my name written in permanent marker covering the entire bench structure. So anyway. This girl never attacked me or tried to ruin my life, years later she got married, had kids, etc., etc. I also took steps to make it clear I wasn’t going to return her affections. However, the point is that hardcore crushes can do stuff to you. My situation was pretty tame in comparison to the movie, but this premise of a girl getting totally bonkers didn’t seem all that out of the realm of realism to me. I am not saying it’s normal behavior, it’s bat-s—t crazy. I was also the same age as the girl. In this movie, Adrian and Nick are 14 years apart so it’s quite a bit different regarding that as well. 

This script does tell us that Adrian is super smart, so it also makes sense that she would know about the things she knows about. One of those things is bees and wasps which is kind of funny because the actress she torments with those Jennifer Rubin was later in THE WASP WOMAN remake as “The Wasp Woman”. By the way, Jennifer is solid in this as was Alicia. We also got a pretty solid performance from Cary Elwes (THE HYPERIONS). Wrapping up the standouts, Kurtwood Smith (ROBOCOP) was good as Cliff Forrester and the dude is kind of a jerk which Kurtwood is a master at playing.

Overall this is a pretty crazy thriller that does a good job of ramping up slowly, but it also serves as a cautionary tale. Do not mess with the heads of minors flirting wise, or sexually because they are extremely impressionable even if what you think you are doing is harmless. Don’t be a groomer. If you get in a situation that is morally messed up like this one, just move your goofy butt out of Dodge. Get a cabin in the woods, buy an RV, or whatever you need to do to get out of that situation. 

This thing gets a 4 out of 7. I take it more as an edgy After School Special than anything else.

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