8. POOL PARTY: Is there a swimming pool in your plot? Take a dip, mind the drip.

Look, I never went on a date in high school and missed the prom, so who am I to give advice to the kids, but as I watched this movie, people still under the age of twenty are basing their life decisions on their first relationships instead of realizing life is long and when you’re young, if Madison (Erika Christensen) wants to get her canoe shellacked while you’re trying to teach her to swim, why worry that you already have a girlfriend when you’re both about to go away to college and will break up by Thanksgiving?

The kids are into drama, that’s why. As for me, I was drinking in my room and watching movies all night, which is exactly how I spend my fifties, except I do have a wife now. I get that morality. I don’t get teenage dating morality.

Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) is a swimming star who is being worked hard by his coach (Dan Hedaya, who deserves better). He’s good enough to get a scholarship, which may separate him from his girl Amy (Shiri Appleby).

He meets Madison Bell, the new girl in school, by almost hitting her with his car. He gives her a ride home and she leaves her notebook, which is a trick to getting another date. Ben is a bit weirded out to learn that school weirdo Christopher (James DeBello) is her cousin. They have a nice little diner date, she tells him she had a boyfriend back in New York that plays baseball and he tells her he has Amy.

Then he gives her the beans in the swimming pool. They paddle up Coochie Creek. They do some schnoodlypooping. And they also have sex.

Much like every insane woman in every erotic thriller, that night of passion unlocks the killing machine inside Madison’s mind, making her try and force Amy out when all she seemingly wanted was one night of love like in that Heart song. Look, more advice, when you’re having sex and someone says, “I need you to tell me you love me, just for me. It doesn’t mean anything,” it means something. And you’re probably going to lose your friends, rabbit and anything else you love.

Madison then dates and kills his rival Josh (Clayne Crawford), makes it seem like Ben is on steroids and then sets him up for Josh’s murder. Oh yeah, she also runs Amy off the road dressed like Ben.

Our protagonist heads off to the hospital where Amy’s baseball boyfriend Jake is in a coma, a place that Madison still visits. He sets her up and when she confronts him, his jock friends videotape her confessing as she thinks that it’s just her and Ben. The sixteen year old always alive in my old body hates this moment, because the enemy has become the hero and I can’t deal with that, even today when I have compromised so many times.

If you think this is where this movie ends, you have never seen an erotic thriller.

This was produced by Furthur Films, which is owned by Michael Douglas, the absolute lord and master of getting insane women to try and destroy his life while also being a rich jerk that we have to somehow cheer for.

Director John Polson is also an actor and mainly works in episodic cable today.

All these years, I thought this movie starred Julia Stiles. No, that’s Erika Christensen. In the same year as this, she also had sex in a swimming pool in The Banger Sisters. I want to know how her character was able to get Amy into an office chair, perfectly in the center of the pool yet can’t swim herself.

Also: I thought Jesse Bradford was Freddie Prinze Jr.