PACIFIC HEIGHTS (1990 FILM)

'''Pacific Heights''' is a 1990 thriller film directed by John Schlesinger, starring Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, and Michael Keaton. The original music score was composed by Hans Zimmer. The film's tagline is: "It seemed like the perfect house. He seemed like the perfect tenant. Until they asked him to leave."

Contents

Plot summary

Critics

Location

DVD

Main cast

References

External links

Plot summary

The film opens up with Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton) lying in bed with a woman, only to be quickly jostled out of bed and beaten up by some hired thugs who tell him to leave town or else. The film then moves to an unmarried yuppie couple Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) and Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) buying a large $750,000+ polychrome apartment in the exclusive San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where they renovate it and plan to rent the two apartments on the first floor to cover most of the monthly mortgage.
The couple seems mildly interested in having their African American friend and city cop become their tenant, but his application gets lost, causing the cop to believe that they are discriminating against him because of his race. Yet, their first tenants are an Asian American couple, and things seem rosy until they meet Carter Hayes.
Hayes has all the trappings of being a good client, i.e. a friendly face, and the ability to talk as if he is part of some legit educated middle class. In reality, he is really a manipulative and deadly con man who does not pay rent, the deposit, changes the locks and quickly gets the Goodmans into all sorts of trouble through scare tactics, verbal baiting and turning his own apartment into a dark cockroach-infested den. All of this is part of Hayes elaborate scheme to use the California tenant laws and his army of cockroaches to somehow get control of the property cheap, although how this would occur is not explained, and the film's depiction of typical landlord-tenant laws and tenant rights is woefully inaccurate.
As Hayes does various antics, Goodman will quickly overreact, thus getting into trouble with the law and eventually he has an accident, while Palmer remains passive.
The stress causes Patty to have a miscarriage and drives Drake to attack Hayes. After destroying their dreams and aspirations and prompting the other tenants to flee in fear, Hayes vanishes almost without a trace.
While Goodman lies in bed recovering from gun shot wounds fired by Hayes (who was not incriminated due to Drake disobeying a restraining order), Patty becomes determined to have her revenge. She searches what remains of the apartment and is able to track Hayes down to his new con game involving a wealthy and elderly widower. Patty poses as Hayes' wife in order to get into his hotel room and charge plenty of expensive room service and wine on his credit cards and then call in to have them declared stolen so that when Hayes returns he is arrested and forced to charm his way out of jail. Hayes quickly makes it back to the apartment and a fight erupts between Patty and him, resulting in Hayes' demise.

Critics

Roger Ebert criticised the film for producing a yuppie horror thriller with a Freddy Krueger-like tenant, the use of obvious shock effects and following too many clichés of horror films, such as the dark basement or murder of a family pet.^[1] It was also noted that the film was penned by a writer with a bad experience with a tenant and came out with a message that tenants have too many rights. However, Chris Hicks of the ''Salt Lake City Desert News'' was among the critics who praised the acting, especially of Keaton, and found enjoyment in having Patty getting her revenge on a man who had manipulated the law, albeit a Hollywood version of the law, to wreck her dreams and hurt the man she loved.^[2]
This film was #94 on Bravo's ''100 Scariest Movie Moments''.

Location

''Pacific Heights'' is set in Pacific Heights in San Francisco. However, the location of the house in the film is on Potrero Hill in San Francisco at the corner of 19th Street and Texas Street.

DVD

The DVD edition of the film was released in 1999 and included a trailer for the film, but no other special features such as a director's audio commentary, deleted or extended scenes or subtitles.

Main cast

Actor	Role
Matthew Modine	Drake Goodman
Melanie Griffith	Patty Palmer
Michael Keaton	Carter Hayes
Laurie Metcalf	Stephanie MacDonald
Mako	Toshio Watanabe
Nobu McCarthy	Mira Watanabe
Dorian Harewood	Dennis Reed
Tippi Hedren	Florence Peters
Beverly D'Angelo	Ann Miller
Carl Lumbly	Lou Baker

References

1. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900928/REVIEWS/9280301/1023
2. http://deseretnews.com/movies/view/1,1257,1381,00.html

External links

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