Movie · 1994 · Romance, Mystery, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · English
Curator score: 0.2/10 (28K ratings)
In the heat of desire, love can turn to deception. Nothing is what it seems when day turns into night.
Overview
A color-blind psychiatrist is stalked by an unknown killer after taking over his murdered friend's therapy group and becomes embroiled in an intense affair with a mysterious woman who may be connected to the crime.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.2/10
IMDb: 5.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 22%
Metacritic: 36
TMDB: 5.8/10
Director
Richard Rush
Production
Cinergi Pictures, Hollywood Pictures
Cast
Bruce Willis, Jane March, Rubén Blades, Lesley Ann Warren, Scott Bakula, Brad Dourif, Lance Henriksen, Kevin J. O'Connor, Andrew Lowery, Eriq La Salle, Jeff Corey, Kathleen Wilhoite, Shirley Knight, John Bower, Avi Korein, Steven R. Barnett, Roberta Storm, Erick Avari, Lena Banks, Rachel Wagner
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy, wildly overcooked 90s erotic thriller with enough camp, sex, and narrative absurdity to entertain the right viewer, but it is also clumsy, exploitative, and often unintentionally funny. The mystery is less satisfying than the vibe, and the movie’s reputation rests more on excess than craft.
Best for
fans of so-bad-it's-good thrillers
viewers curious about 90s erotic noir
people who enjoy campy star vehicles
audiences who like lurid mystery plots and melodrama
Skip if
you want a tight, credible mystery
you dislike explicit sexual content and sleaze
you need strong character writing or emotional realism
you are not in the mood for camp or tonal chaos
Overview
Color of Night is one of those 90s studio thrillers that seems to have been assembled from a pile of overheated influences: noir, psychoanalysis, erotic melodrama, and a dash of giallo-style murder mystery. The result is less a coherent suspense film than a fever dream of split-diopter shots, glossy LA surfaces, and dialogue that keeps daring you to take it seriously.
Worth noting
What makes it linger is not quality so much as commitment. It is shameless, excessive, and often hilarious, whether intentionally or not. The movie’s reputation has become inseparable from its absurdity, but there is real curiosity value in watching a major Hollywood production push this hard into sleaze and psychosexual nonsense.
Bottom line
If you like polished bad movies, this is a prime specimen: messy, overlong, and ridiculous, yet never dull. If you want a genuinely gripping thriller, though, the movie’s pleasures are mostly accidental and the payoff is thin.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jake Isgar · 264 likes
Responsible for the most savage piece of IMDb trivia that I’ve ever read.
EDIT, 10.6.20: The trivia referenced above, about director Richard Rush demanding a body double for Bruce Willis' pool penis, has been removed from IMDb. The savagery continues.
Will Menaker (2★) · 226 likes
An absolutely ludicrous knee-slapper, a 90s "erotic" thriller that will have you hooting and hollering as you discern the risible plot twist within the first ten minutes of the movie, hear therapist Bruce Willis nut as he has sex with a teenager with gender dysphoria, and see him develop "psychosomatic color blindness" after a patient jumps out of his office window. Holds up in precisely no ways. Hilariously terrible and definitely worth watching.
UPDATE - I just remembered the scene… more
HKFanatic (2★) · 178 likes
American Giallo. If you ever wondered what a Brian De Palma movie would be like if Brian De Palma had no taste, then consider "Color of Night" appointment viewing. I never thought I'd say this but: this film has too many split-diopter shots. It also has a score that sounds like it was composed for the Sega CD, a sex scene that's longer than some operas, and Bruce Willis as a psychologist whose patient commits suicide in the opening scene just a few years before "The Sixth Sense."
Slig001 (3.5★) · 117 likes
Basic Instinct but dafter, and with Bruce Willis. The film begins with a woman jumping out of a window. Her psychologist, traumatised and now colour blind (?) relocates to LA to see his friend, who is then murdered - the therapy group he lead makes up the list of suspects. This an extremely ham-fisted attempt at the film noir formula. The script is clunky in the extreme and features numerous lines of unbelievable dialogue and a cop that makes the… more Basic Instinct but dafter, and with Bruce Willis. The film begins with a woman jumping out of a window. Her psychologist, traumatised and now colour blind (?) relocates to LA to see his friend, who is then murdered - the therapy group he lead makes up the list of suspects. This an extremely ham-fisted attempt at the film noir formula. The script is clunky in the extreme and features numerous lines of unbelievable dialogue and a cop that makes the… more
SilentDawn (2★) · 115 likes
35
Huh. Hmm. Well. Hm. OK. Eh. What?
Cackled like a hyena when I found out about the 140 minute director's cut.