April 21: Fashion Day — A movie all about fashion that you will critique.

Pen Densham had a cool path to directing. He left school at fifteen to be a photographer and shoot The Rolling Stones, then moved from England to Canada to direct commercials and documentaries with Marshall McLuhan. He then formed found Insight Productions with John Watson and earned 70 international award for their movies, including two Oscar nominations. One of the movies they made, If Wishes Were Horses, was called “The best film of any length shown on Canadian TV.”

It brought him to the attention of Norman Jewison who got him to Hollywood. He and Watson started  Trilogy Entertainment Group, serving as creative consultants on movies like Footloose and Rocky II before becoming big successes with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. They also produced the new versions of The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, as well as Poltergeist: The Legacy in the 1990s and 2000s.

He also directed two movies, The Zoo Gang and what we’re here to talk about today, The Kiss.

Felice Dunbar (former model Joanna Pacula) and her sister Hillary (Pamela Collyer) are totally living the start of The Parent Trap. Felice is to live with her aunt (Céline Lomez) and Hillary with her father. As they take a train away from the Belgian Congo, her aunt — wearing a serpent medallion — attacks the young girl. The lights go out as she kisses her, blood coming from her mouth, and when they come back on, the aunt is a lifeless deformed body and the little girl is alone but has the talisman.

Years later, Hillary lives in America with her husband Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus) and her daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger). Her sister calls her in the hopes of meeting her family, but she refuses. She goes to a gun shop and while looking in the window, a car smashes her into the store, killing her.

Five months later, Felice — who works as a model — shows up in town and moves in. Next door neighbor Brenda Carson (Mimi Kuzyk) reacts to her as if she is a cat and becoming allergic. Amy hates her aunt immediately and after making fun of her with her friend Heather (Sabrina Boudot), her BFF is almost murdered when her necklace gets stuck in an escalator. This is absolutely my childhood trauma, so I’m glad I didn’t see this until now.

Felice starts making moves on her sister’s widower, while Amy confides to her boyfriend Terry O’Connell (Shawn Levy, who directed the Night at the Museum movies) about finding her friend’s bloody sunglasses inside her aunt’s room, as well as a serpent talisman. Terry follows her aunt to a hotel room where he watches her in the midst of a ritual. She transforms into a cat and nearly kills him. He barely gets away, only to be run over and his death made to look like a suicide. Amy then tells a priest who remembers Hillary telling him about her sister and how evil she was. He tries to run when she shows up and spontaneously combusts. How many powers does this werecat have? And how wild it is that when they do a DNA test on her, it shows that she is already dead?

Felice reveals that she must continue living — inside the blood — of Amy, trying to transform her into what she is. It takes Brenda the neighbor, Amy and her father — as well as garden shears, a propane tank and a swimming pool — to stop her.

This was written by Stephen Volk, who also was the writer of Gothic, The Guardian— that makes sense — and Ghostwatch.

You can watch this on YouTube.