By any rational measure, The Seduction should be a disaster left buried in the VHS graveyard, resting peacefully between Body Double and 9½ Weeks. It’s sleazy, it’s uneven, it’s about as subtle as a disco ball in a monastery—and yet you keep watching. Like watching a soap opera have a psychotic break, this 1982 “thriller” has aged into something oddly charming, equal parts time capsule and guilty pleasure. Everyone hated it when it came out, but that was before nostalgia gave us all Stockholm Syndrome for bad movies. And besides, it stars Morgan Fairchild at her peak—both in glamour and in, well, anatomical perfection.
This is the kind of film that smells faintly of Aqua Net and desperation. The lighting is soft, the music by Lalo Schifrin sounds like it’s about to break into a porn groove, and everyone behaves as though they’re living in a particularly dangerous perfume commercial. It’s the early 1980s—cocaine is still a vitamin, stalkers are “admirers,” and every Los Angeles swimming pool glows like radioactive Kool-Aid. The Seduction wants to be Fatal Attraction before Fatal Attraction existed, but what it ends up being is Days of Our Lives with a knife and a head injury.
Morgan Fairchild: The Glamour That Ate the Screen
Let’s start with the obvious. Morgan Fairchild is the movie. Not in the sense that she gives a career-defining performance—no, this isn’t Norma Rae—but because the camera worships her like a deity made of blonde hair and moisturized perfection. As Jamie Douglas, she plays an L.A. news anchor whose life is a dizzying carousel of soft focus, silk blouses, and wide-eyed alarm. Her character’s defining traits? She’s beautiful, successful, and unfortunately located within binocular range of a man with the sexual subtlety of a foghorn.
Fairchild gives the kind of performance that makes you realize how much charisma can save a bad script. Her dialogue may be written in soap bubbles (“Leave me alone, Derek!”), but she delivers it with full commitment and a hint of camp that suggests she knows exactly what kind of movie she’s in. Her scream isn’t terror—it’s weaponized glamour.
And yes, there’s Morgan’s nude scene. Entire generations of cable viewers have stumbled across The Seduction late at night and suddenly found themselves invested in the art of voyeurism. Fairchild’s infamous hot tub scene is shot with the reverence of a religious experience—the cinematographer clearly believed he was painting The Birth of Venus, only with more steam and feathered hair. It’s gratuitous, but it’s also strangely triumphant. Fairchild doesn’t just play a victim—she plays a goddess under siege, glowing defiantly while the world tries to drag her down.
Andrew Stevens: The Stalker as a Nervous Haircut
Opposite her is Andrew Stevens, playing Derek Sanford, a psychotic photographer whose idea of courtship involves breaking into homes and fondling himself behind furniture. Stevens is the kind of actor who looks like he should be selling Amway, which makes his transition to “obsessive killer” unintentionally hilarious. He’s a man-child with a camera, a bowl haircut, and the energy of someone who thinks “restraining order” is a term of endearment.
In another world, Derek might’ve been an awkward film student with too many Polaroids of the same girl. Here, he’s the physical embodiment of incel sexual anxiety complete with a an almost comical leering stare. His “relationship” with Jamie is a grotesque parody of desire—he loves her so much he’s willing to destroy everything around her, including logic.
Stevens plays Derek with the wild-eyed intensity of someone auditioning for a villain role in a detergent commercial. You never really fear him, but you do occasionally pity him. He’s not a monster; he’s a man who needed a therapist and got a telephoto lens instead.
A Plot That Thinks It’s Hitchcock, But Feels More Like Hustler
Plot-wise, The Seduction plays out like a Lifetime movie that got lost in a strip mall. Jamie is stalked, dismissed by the police, terrorized again, and finally takes matters into her own manicured hands. There’s a boyfriend who exists solely to die in the most absurdly staged hot tub murder ever committed to film, and a detective who offers advice so useless it’s practically performance art.
Director David Schmoeller, who gave us the creepy Tourist Trap, seems less interested in suspense than in creating the world’s longest shampoo commercial. Every chase, every confrontation, every moment of peril looks like it was lit for a Revlon ad. There’s a perverse kind of genius in how earnestly the movie believes its own nonsense. It’s exploitation wrapped in satin sheets, pretending to be social commentary.
And yet, somehow, that’s part of its charm. The Seduction doesn’t wink at the audience—it dives headfirst into its melodrama, screaming and clawing like it’s auditioning for a telenovela. The dialogue may be clunky, but the energy is pure, undiluted sincerity. It’s trying so hard to be sexy and scary that it accidentally becomes something even better: funny.
A Time Capsule of Bad Taste (and That’s a Compliment)
Watching The Seduction today is like opening a time capsule filled with glossy magazine ads and sexual paranoia. It’s a relic from an era when thrillers thought therapy was for weaklings and every woman in peril had a walk-in closet the size of a small nation. The film’s aesthetic—pastel interiors, heavy synth score, endless reflections in mirrors and windows—feels like a fever dream directed by your aunt’s hairstylist.
It’s also a fascinating look at early-’80s attitudes toward gender. Jamie is both empowered and objectified: she’s successful, articulate, and independent, yet constantly punished for it. The movie can’t decide whether it wants to celebrate her strength or exploit her vulnerability, so it does both, sometimes in the same scene. It’s messy, but it’s also unintentionally revealing—a cultural artifact of male fear and female defiance wrapped up in lip gloss and blood.
And let’s not forget that Lalo Schifrin’s score does so much heavy lifting. The man wrote Mission: Impossible, and here he’s forced to elevate a stalker story that occasionally forgets it’s supposed to be suspenseful. The result is music that’s way too good for what it’s scoring—lush, eerie, and borderline romantic, as if the soundtrack itself feels sorry for everyone involved.
Trash Transcends
Is The Seduction a good movie? God, no. But is it entertaining? Absolutely. It’s the cinematic equivalent of cheap champagne—gaudy, fizzy, and guaranteed to give you a headache, but irresistible in the right mood.
It’s a film that exists purely to be watched, not admired. It’s the kind of thing you throw on at 1 a.m. with friends, a bowl of popcorn, and the understanding that irony is part of the fun. In hindsight, it’s impossible not to admire its sheer commitment to sleaze. It may have been roasted by critics and buried under Razzie nominations, but at least it never pretends to be something it’s not.
And as for Morgan Fairchild—well, she survived this movie and went on to become an icon. She glides through the chaos with the poise of a woman who knows the camera adores her. Watching her here feels like witnessing a star in the wrong movie, shining anyway. She’s the diamond in a rhinestone factory.
Final Thoughts: Long Live Sleaze
Revisiting The Seduction today feels like reading an old gossip magazine in the waiting room of hell. It’s tacky, tone-deaf, and weirdly comforting. Beneath all the absurdity lies something oddly poignant—a portrait of a world obsessed with beauty, terrified of desire, and convinced that good lighting can fix anything.
Everyone may have hated The Seduction in 1982, but maybe we just weren’t ready for it. Decades later, it’s not just a bad movie—it’s a glorious fossil from the golden age of erotic thrillers, when being ridiculous was an art form and Morgan Fairchild was queen of the jungle.
