Thanks to Fine Performances from Bruce Greenwood and Virginia Madsen, the Seedy 1994 Neo-Noir Bitter Vengeance is Surprisingly Non-Terrible
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
I don’t like to brag but at this point I am VERY knowledgable about the many low-budget erotic thrillers Virginia Madsen made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just as I know way too much about the film and television careers of Tawny Kitaen and Rebecca Gayheart.
I have a curious career filled with extended side quests and unusual obsessions. Also, through the magic of Control Nathan Rabin 4.0, I have empowered YOU, the reader/patron to choose the movies and television shows and steamy television movies that I must watch and write about for this column.
I am a weird dude who chooses to write about a lot of weird, random-ass shit that could not be less commercial or appealing to a mainstream audience. In a possibly related development, I’m currently celebrating my sixth straight year of making nowhere near enough money from this website to support myself or my family.
I don’t care what anyone says. I think Virginia Madsen is extremely attractive.
How do I get by? Three words: depleting my 401K and liquor store robberies. I’m grateful that liquor store employees are generally pragmatic souls and for the most part don’t try to play hero or tough guy or this December would be even grimmer than usual.
But you beautiful, questionably sane souls often choose movies and epic projects for me that are even weirder and more random than the crap I choose for myself.
That’s how I find myself doing the deepest of deep dives into the prolific half decade national treasure Virginia Madsen spent cranking out one forgettable, interchangeable erotic thriller after another for the theatrical, home video and television market.
Madsen proved herself as an actress and a movie star throughout the 1980s and was magnetic in cult classics like The Hot Spot and Candyman. Yet she still ended up slumming hardcore in a bunch of lurid trash unworthy of her talent.
These movies all pretty much look the same and have distractingly similar/generic plots and titles. But some are better than others. Through exhaustive exploration and analysis, I have attained a granular knowledge of this era of Madsen’s career.
Madsen’s leading men unsurprisingly play a big role in determining a film’s quality. Madsen acted opposite some big league movie stars during this stage in her career and some small screen nobodies. Madsen’s Gotham leading man Tommy Lee Jones? Big time movie star. Oscar winner, even. Madsen’s 1991 costar Pierce Brosnan is similarly a big old movie star. Dude even played James Bond if I remember correctly.
1994’s forgettably titled Bitter Vengeance also benefits from a talented actor and movie star in the male lead in Bruce Greenwood. The handsome Canadian with the sinister aristocratic air is riveting as Jack Westward, a frustrated, rage-filled exemplar of toxic masculinity we first meet as a motorcycle cop pulling over the gorgeous Annie (Virginia Madsen).
Annie manages to smile and charm her way out of trouble and a ticket. A Bratz: The Movie-style five year time jump later the cop with the steely demeanor and the beautiful blonde are very unhappily married.
Jack is mad at the world and his long-suffering wife after having to leave the police force under shadowy circumstances. Under-employed as a security guard at a bank alongside Arthur Fulmer (Gordon Jump of WKRP in Cincinnati, the Maytag Repairman and the episode of Diff’rent Strokes where he tries to molest Gary Coleman fame), Jack drinks too much, lashes out at his wife and broods about the mistakes and failures of the past.
He’s a deeply unhappy man profoundly dissatisfied with his lot in life. Then Jack gets his groove back the old fashioned way: by having enthusiastic sex with multiple beautiful women and plotting to steal a fortune.
Feeling like he has nothing to lose, he finally acts on his attraction to a sexy coworker and the two leap lustily into bed and begin a career-transforming affair.
The extramarital affair sets Jack’s dormant libido into overdrive and he soon finds himself doing the unthinkable and having wild, deeply satisfying sex with his wife in addition to his workplace mistress.
Cheating on his wife similarly kickstarts Jack’s appetite for other sins and transgressions. With his concerned mistress, he hatches a plan to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from his employer.
But even that is not enough for this sick twist. After delivering a cold-blooded speech to Annie about how much he despises here and the life they have created, Jack bonks her on the head and frames her for his murder.
You might be asking how that’s possible without a corpse and all I can say is that it’s not the best idea for an evil criminal plan. There are clearly some flaws in it. Jack is very convincingly evil and full of hatred, lust and greed but a criminal genius he is not.
Jack does succeed, however, in making the cops think that he’s dead and that Annie is responsible for his murder. She must then figure out her husband’s evil scheme and thwart him before he can victimize other unsuspecting women.
Bitter Vengeance is one of THREE, count em three erotic thrillers Madsen made in 1994, the others being Blue Tiger and Caroline at Midnight. This is easily the best of a rotten bunch because it pairs Madsen with an actor of her caliber and because it feels like Neo-Noir rather than pandering soft-core porn.
Screenwriter Pablo Fenjves’ script won’t win any awards for originality, or any awards at all, but it hits all the expected beats with confidence. Greenwood makes for a hiss-worthy villain while Madsen makes for a resourceful and sympathetic heroine.
I don’t want to oversell Bitter Vengeance. I was impressed by it in no small part because my expectations for this batch of films is so low. It’s nothing special, just 90 reasonably diverting minutes of old-fashioned sleaze but that was more than enough for me at this unfortunate stage in my epic journey through Madsen’s life and career.
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