INTRODUCTION: SEX, SURVEILLANCE, AND SNOOZE
Back in the early ’90s, the erotic thriller was having its cultural moment. Fatal Attraction had shocked audiences just a few years earlier, and by the time Basic Instinct rolled around in 1992, the formula was well-worn: seductive women, weak men, voyeurism, murder, and moody saxophone music. Somewhere in the lower rungs of that erotic ladder came Night Eyes (1990), a low-budget, straight-to-video sleaze-fest that thinks it’s being provocative while barely managing to stay awake.
Directed by Jag Mundhra and starring Andrew Stevens and Tanya Roberts, Night Eyes tries to pass itself off as a steamy psychological thriller but ends up feeling more like the cinematic equivalent of a cigarette left burning in an ashtray: stale, smoky, and kind of sad. It promises scandal, lust, and betrayal—and delivers only cheap window blinds, bad acting, and long stretches of absolutely nothing.
THE PLOT: A DULL BLADE DISGUISED AS A KNIFE
The setup is pure pulp. Will Griffith (Andrew Stevens) is a former cop turned private security expert, running a company that installs high-tech surveillance systems in Los Angeles homes for rich clients. He’s hired by rock star Brian Walker (played by a constantly sneering Cooper Huckabee) to install cameras throughout his posh estate to spy on his wife Nikki (Tanya Roberts), whom he suspects of infidelity.
Will installs the gear and begins his stakeout. Sure enough, Nikki’s behavior arouses suspicion. She has late-night meetings, emotional phone calls, and secrets—lots of secrets. But as Will continues to monitor her, something changes. He starts to feel sorry for her. Then he starts to fall for her. Then, inexplicably, they begin an affair. What follows is a slow, poorly staged unraveling of lies, manipulation, and violence, complete with a “twist” ending you can see coming about 40 minutes in—if you’re still awake by then.
TONE AND PACING: A THRILLER THAT REFUSES TO THRILL
For a film that markets itself as an erotic thriller, Night Eyes is severely lacking in both the erotic and the thrilling. The pacing is abysmal. It trudges from scene to scene like a sloth on sedatives. You wait for suspense to build, for sexual tension to sizzle—but everything is dragged out, and none of it lands with any weight.
Even when things are supposed to be sexy, the film doesn’t know what to do. The sex scenes—of which there are several—feel obligatory and strangely mechanical. There’s no sense of danger or passion. It’s all just slow-motion writhing under blue light with saxophone noodling in the background. You’ve seen this stuff on late-night cable, and probably changed the channel halfway through.
And that’s the problem. The entire film feels like it was designed for the 1:00 a.m. Cinemax crowd, back when content didn’t need to be good—it just needed to be adult. But even by softcore standards, Night Eyes is a slog. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t spark. It just leans on clichés and hopes the viewer is too bored to care.
ANDREW STEVENS: BLAND MAN, BLAND PERFORMANCE
Andrew Stevens, who also co-wrote the script, stars as Will Griffith, and if there’s a more charisma-free lead in the history of erotic thrillers, we’ve yet to see him. Stevens walks through the film with all the intensity of a department store mannequin. He’s supposed to be conflicted—a man torn between professional duty and personal desire—but mostly he just looks like he’s doing math in his head while staring at Tanya Roberts’ chest.
Stevens isn’t a terrible actor per se, but he has no screen presence. His delivery is monotone, his body language is stiff, and his chemistry with Roberts—if you can call it that—feels completely unearned. He looks bored. He sounds bored. And watching him try to be the film’s emotional center is like watching a rock try to do Shakespeare.
What makes it worse is that Stevens is also the co-writer of the film. So whatever dullness his character exudes isn’t just bad acting—it’s also bad writing. Will Griffith has no depth. No moral complexity. No arc. He’s just a guy who installs cameras, breaks professional boundaries, and somehow gets the girl because… plot.
TANYA ROBERTS: THE ONLY REASON THIS MOVIE EXISTS
Let’s be honest—if Night Eyes is remembered at all, it’s because of Tanya Roberts. The former Charlie’s Angels star and one-time Bond girl (A View to a Kill) had carved out a niche as a softcore sex symbol by this point in her career, and this film leans hard on that persona.
Roberts plays Nikki Walker with the sort of aloof sensuality she became known for. She spends most of the film lounging around in silky lingerie, looking out windows, or engaging in slow-motion trysts under flattering lighting. And while her acting range remains limited—she still delivers lines like she’s reading them off a cue card behind the camera—she at least brings a degree of presence to the screen.
But the film doesn’t give her anything to do. Nikki is less a character and more a fantasy template: the lonely rich wife with the empty mansion and an even emptier heart. Her motivations are vague, her actions contradictory, and her dialogue flat. She exists for the male lead to desire, distrust, and eventually possess. It’s the kind of role that feels retrograde even by 1990’s standards.
That said, Roberts has a certain glow to her that makes her the only magnetic thing in the film. Is it enough to save Night Eyes? Not even close. But she’s the only one here trying to play the genre game with any energy.
SUPPORTING CAST: WALKING PLOT DEVICES
Cooper Huckabee plays rock star Brian Walker as an angry, possessive, permanently scowling cartoon of a man. He chews gum, yells at people, throws tantrums, and wears sunglasses indoors. There’s nothing subtle about him, and nothing believable either. He’s a caricature of the controlling husband—one who practically screams, “I’m the villain!” in his first scene.
Everyone else in the film exists to either warn Will not to get involved, or help him install a new camera. There are detectives, shady tech guys, lawyers—they come and go without leaving any impact. No one feels real. No one feels alive. The supporting cast is a collection of walking plot devices, inserted to pad out scenes between softcore interludes.
WRITING AND DIRECTION: COASTING ON CLICHÉS
The script—written by Stevens and Tom Citrano—is an exercise in genre laziness. Every line feels pulled from a dusty bin labeled “erotic thriller filler.” There’s no sense of voice, no ear for dialogue, and no understanding of pacing. Characters speak in exposition. Scenes drag on long after they’ve made their point. And the supposed tension between surveillance and seduction is never fully explored.
Jag Mundhra’s direction doesn’t help. The late director had a career built on exploitation and erotic fare, but here he feels like he’s running on autopilot. There’s no style to the cinematography, no atmosphere in the framing, no personality in the visual language. The camera leers, but it never observes. It peeks, but never probes. Everything is surface-level, and even the surface feels cheap.
Scenes that should crackle with tension—Will watching Nikki undress, or catching a glimpse of something incriminating—fall flat because there’s no suspense, no build-up. The voyeurism angle is wasted. There’s no deeper commentary on power, desire, or technology. Night Eyes isn’t interested in that. It just wants to linger on bodies and fill time until the next generic plot beat.
THE EROTICISM: SIMULATED HEAT IN A COLD ROOM
The erotic content of Night Eyes is supposed to be its main draw. But it’s dull, lifeless, and entirely by-the-numbers. The sex scenes are long, drawn-out affairs with bad saxophone solos and uncomfortable camera angles. They’re not erotic. They’re clinical. They’re repetitive.
There’s no seduction, no escalation. Just bodies rubbing together, accompanied by light moaning and dramatic lighting. It feels less like sex and more like a photo shoot for a lingerie catalog where everyone forgot they were being filmed. There’s nothing passionate or dangerous about it. And for a film that hinges on forbidden attraction, that’s fatal.
THE VERDICT: A FANTASY THAT FORGETS TO BE INTERESTING
Night Eyes was never aiming to be high art. That’s fine. Not every movie has to be Vertigo. But even by its modest ambitions—as a late-night, skin-deep erotic thriller—it fails. The plot is weak. The pacing is deadly. The characters are thin. The thrills are nonexistent. And the eroticism, the one thing the movie is clearly trying to deliver, is both uninspired and lifeless.
Tanya Roberts gives it her best smolder, and Andrew Stevens tries to play stoic, but neither of them can overcome the vacuum at the heart of the film: a total lack of purpose. Night Eyes doesn’t explore the dark side of desire. It doesn’t examine the ethics of surveillance. It doesn’t thrill, titillate, or seduce. It just drifts through a fog of clichés and bad lighting until the credits roll.
FINAL SCORE: 3/10 – One point for Tanya Roberts, one for 1990 nostalgia, one for unintentional comedy. Everything else is a blurry videotape of lost opportunity.
