My review was written in August 1987 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.
"Trepasses" is a Texas-made melodrama that proves that the lightning that made "Blood Simple" a sleeper hit doesn't necessarily strike twice. Filmmaker Loren Bivens is working from similar hothouse material but fails to come up with the style and thrills of the earlier Coen Bros. Effort. Pic was shot in 1983 under the moniker "Forgive Us Our Trespasses".
Executive produce Robert Kuhn toplines as Franklin Ramsey, a simple cattle farmer who, in a poorly integrated prolog, learns the perils of being a good samaritan, when he and his son Johnny (Thom Meyer) fifht with two thugs (co-director Adam Roarke and co-writer Lou Diamond Phillips) who are raping neighbor Mary Pillot at her farm. Phillips kills Johnny and the thugs escape.
Six months later, the killers are still on the loose. Pillot's dad (Ben Johnson), who runs the local bank, dies, leaving her Yankee husband (Van Brooks) in charge.
Melodramatic gimmick that makes the plot tick is that Pillot and Kuhn feel a bond from the traumatic rape incident and fall in love. Hubby Brooks actually witnessed the rape but was too gutless to help out. When he finds out about the adulterous affair he seeks revenge. Totally improbable twist has Roarke and Phillips, fresh from a police lineup, hired by Brooks to poison Kuhn's cattle. Kuhn catches the thugs in the act, kills them in self-defense and plot unravels as Brooks spirals to suicide.
Acting is way too lowkey by the leads, especially comatose Kuhn and Brooks. With a mournful musical score, picture is sleep-inducing rather than suspenseful. Only point of interest is the presence of Phillips, currently the hot star as Richie Valens in "La Bamba", very convincing with a mustache as an evil young heavy.
"Trepasses" is a Texas-made melodrama that proves that the lightning that made "Blood Simple" a sleeper hit doesn't necessarily strike twice. Filmmaker Loren Bivens is working from similar hothouse material but fails to come up with the style and thrills of the earlier Coen Bros. Effort. Pic was shot in 1983 under the moniker "Forgive Us Our Trespasses".
Executive produce Robert Kuhn toplines as Franklin Ramsey, a simple cattle farmer who, in a poorly integrated prolog, learns the perils of being a good samaritan, when he and his son Johnny (Thom Meyer) fifht with two thugs (co-director Adam Roarke and co-writer Lou Diamond Phillips) who are raping neighbor Mary Pillot at her farm. Phillips kills Johnny and the thugs escape.
Six months later, the killers are still on the loose. Pillot's dad (Ben Johnson), who runs the local bank, dies, leaving her Yankee husband (Van Brooks) in charge.
Melodramatic gimmick that makes the plot tick is that Pillot and Kuhn feel a bond from the traumatic rape incident and fall in love. Hubby Brooks actually witnessed the rape but was too gutless to help out. When he finds out about the adulterous affair he seeks revenge. Totally improbable twist has Roarke and Phillips, fresh from a police lineup, hired by Brooks to poison Kuhn's cattle. Kuhn catches the thugs in the act, kills them in self-defense and plot unravels as Brooks spirals to suicide.
Acting is way too lowkey by the leads, especially comatose Kuhn and Brooks. With a mournful musical score, picture is sleep-inducing rather than suspenseful. Only point of interest is the presence of Phillips, currently the hot star as Richie Valens in "La Bamba", very convincing with a mustache as an evil young heavy.