Also known as Thy Neighbour’s Wife, Sex Attraction and Poison, this stars Kari Wuhrer, who from 1988-1989 was the it girl on MTV’s Remote Control (but not the first or the last; the show has Marisol Massey in season 1, Wuhrer was replaced by Alicia Coppola and the last episodes had Susan Ashley in the role). By 1999, she’d been on the Swamp Thing TV show and appeared in several horror movies. By the time she was added to the cast of Sliders and had an album on Rick Rubin’s American Records, Shiny, she was at the top of the world.

This led to a disaster of an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s first talk show. It started when she insulted comedian Stephen Wright, and it only got worse from there.

She’s still acting — doing voice work often — but she never achieved those heights of the late 90s again, where man’s magazines like FHM and Maxim — remember those? — fawned over her. And hey, she’s in many of my favorite movies of that era, like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. But after that? The Prophecy sequels, the Hitcher sequels, movies where she fights spiders and erotic thrillers.

Yes, back in 2000, this was a viable career path. If you had the internet, you had dial-up. Cable and video store softcore was still a thing.

Wuhrer is Ann Stewart, whose husband, Chris (Larry Poindexter), has burned out at work. When he doesn’t get the promotion he feels he is owed, well, he kills himself. Am I supposed to be like the kids and say he unlived himself? And this is after she slept with an old man named Ian McMillan (Michael Cavanaugh) just to ensure that he finally made a sale!

After her husband drives his car off the road to Deathsville, she becomes Anna Johnson and takes over as the live-in au pair for Nicole Garrett (Barbara Crampton), the woman who took her husband’s promotion. Will she turn daughter Darla (Melissa Stone) against her mother? Well, that’s already been done, but yes, she does. She also scuffs her knees in the laundry room pleasuring teen son David (Seth Adam Jones) and has her sights set on husband Scott (Jeff Trachta). Yes, if she has to sleep with every member of the family to get revenge, she will. After all, she had already killed the big boss, Mr. Slider (John Henry Richardson).

Even the way that she got this job comes from revenge. Ann wanted to kill Nicole and accidentally murdered their housekeeper, Karina (Peggy Trentini). This creates a job opening and a way for her to get close to her enemy, who doesn’t even know she is one.

Jay Andrews directed this, but come on, that’s Jim Wynorski, the same as co-writer Noble Henry. He’s joined by writers Sean O’Bannon (Mom’s Outta Site and Mom, Can I Keep Her?) and Al Sophianopoulos, who also write Interlocked: Thrilled to Death. I could be convinced that he’s also Wynorski. Just like the Giallo that inspired these erotic thrillers, they have filmmakers who have plenty of other names and come in so many titles.

And that’s why I already reviewed this as Thy Neighbor’s Wife. 

However, I am not sad. Why wouldn’t I want to watch Kari Wuhrer and Barbara Crampton fight one another one more time? Isn’t that one of life’s simplest pleasures?

Maybe Ann/Anna did Nicole a favor. The last housekeeper, Karina, was about to bone out Scott. Perhaps these two women are close to being one another, and it will take a near-death experience to finally understand her daughter, who is a vacuous cipher of a character.

This is the movie your grandmother would have bought you for Christmas if you asked for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. She would say, “I don’t know all those erotic thrillers you kids are into today.”

You can watch this on Tubi.