Leaving Scars (1997)

After turning her would-be murderer's weapon back on him a young woman finds she has acquired a taste for killing--and wants to do it again.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MATURE/ADULT UPC: 743383970729 Manufacturer No: 39707-2 Product Description

Horrifyingly Bad

I like erotic thrillers. I like Lisa Boyle. I watch new erotic thrillers / Lisa Boyle movies whenever my video store gets one in. But I had not heard of this movie until 8 years after its release, when it was joined as the B side to a Laura Gemser movie. Now I know why.
It's the kind of movie that is SO stupid it's painful to watch, yet it doesn't make up for that with nudity. One villain is super-rich, another is a private eye who is also a big-time pornographer, yet there they are knocking off witnesses and others by themselves. We have three people shot to death in one scene, but no one seems worried that the police might investigate that sort of thing.
Lisa Boyle plays a movie star who is going to get paid $8 million for her new film, yet she's being chased by the super-rich guy and the PI/pornographer with apparently no help or protection by the police (and no publicity, no paparazzi). She's also the big name in this production,having made a dozen good erotic thrillers, and as such she's not going to be showing much skin: one topless scene near the end of the movie. It's a happy scene, and she has a GORGEOUS top, but that's it.
In fact, there is almost no skin in the movie at all, which is bad even for a good erotic thriller, but devastating for a stinker like this. Three skin scenes, and at the end of two of them the girl gets killed (only Lisa Boyle's character survives sex.)
So, to sum up, stupid story, little skin, and the girls get killed: a downer.
P.S. Elaine O'Meara, who gets billed as "call girl" is hot, and her scene gets hot, but then the super-rich guy, who is killing off all the cast, gets angry at her. July 13, 2006

An impressive performance by the gorgeous Lisa Boyle

There are basically two kinds of erotic thrillers: those with Lisa Boyle and those without Lisa Boyle. Thankfully, Leaving Scars falls in the first of those two categories. Lisa plays Diane Carlson, an up and coming actress who somehow finds herself in the crossfire of some really bad dudes. A friend of hers slips her a floppy disk at a party, but Diane misplaces it in the aftermath of a night of drinking and snorting. That friend winds up dead, very dead, and the guys who killed her will stop at nothing to find and get that disk. Meanwhile, Diane has developed a strange friendship with an unemployed lawyer, and he tries to guide her through the process of keeping her safe while also keeping her name out of the papers. Unfortunately, one of her new friend's associates is smack dab in the middle of the whole criminal agenda, placing Diane at more risk than ever. The plot is a little convoluted, as always seems to be the case in these types of films, but basically several people get shot, everyone tries to take a little time out for some nookie, and eventually Diane must fight for her very life. I read one description of Leaving Scars that seemed to imply that Lisa Boyle's character kills a guy and likes it so much she goes on a rampage, but this does not describe this film in any way, shape, or form.

You are probably wondering just how much of Lisa Boyle does one see in Leaving Scars. In point of fact, this movie is not that dependent on its erotic qualities. There is really only one good Lisa Boyle love scene alongside two or three other little quick shots with other girls. One little Lisa Boyle nude scene in and of itself makes any movie worth watching in my opinion, but those who do not like a plot getting in the way of certain extracurricular activities may not want to take a chance on this one. Lisa is quite fetching throughout the entire movie, I might add, even making a terrible hangover look sexy, and I happen to think she is also quite a good actress. Her male co-star stumbles at times, especially in the final scene, but his faults can be easily ignored just by keeping one's eyes on Lisa at all times. September 3, 2003

Our little Lisa's all grown up.

Anyone with Cinemax and insomnia in 1996 remembers Lisa Boyle. She seemed to be on every single night in some bad "erotic thriller" or another. She could grind her hips better than anyone in the free world. Now, as she's getting older, it seems that the genre has past her by. Now, she's reduced to semi-respectable stuff. Echh.

Lisa plays Diane Carlson, a party girl with a bad coke habit, who gets involved with the mob through a case of mistaken identity (read: plot contrivance). Diane and new love-interest Mike now have to find a disk to save her life. This is all pretty high-concept stuff for a Lisa Boyle movie. It all plays like a scuzzy version of Miami Vice. (the gunshots are even badly dubbed)

Even taking the bad-acting, dubbed gunshots, and sound that seems to be recorded in someone's garage into account, this is a decent effort for such a tiny budget. Not much erotism if you're expecting a "typical" Lisa movie, though. There is one love scene, and that's where she seems the most comfortable. She certainly is good at that.

The real gem here is not the movie itself, but the commentary track by the producer and director where they at one point stop to have a bag of chips in between explaining what they were thinking at the time. The story about Lisa's firm butt cracking the plaster in the wall during one scene is pretty funny.

In the end, it's probably not erotic enough for fans of Lisa and not suspenseful enough for lovers of thrillers. Recommendation to avoid all but the commentary track. April 12, 2002

crapq

q February 3, 1999

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