There’s a certain charm in films that don’t just flirt with bad taste but wine and dine it, light a few candles, and slip into something more comfortable. Whispers in the Dark is exactly that kind of movie. Released in 1992, smack in the middle of America’s obsession with erotic thrillers, Christopher Crowe’s film is a fever dream of leather straps, psychiatric ethics violations, and a very out of place Alan Alda.
The film, released in 1992 at the height of the erotic thriller craze, is ostensibly about murder and psychiatry, but really it’s about two actresses: Annabella Sciorra, playing a psychiatrist who discovers her patients are crazier than she is, and Deborah Unger, playing one of those patients with such silky menace that you wonder if she’s really acting or just reading from her diary.
Sciorra: The Anchor in the Storm
Annabella Sciorra, fresh off Jungle Fever and still a couple years away from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, plays Dr. Ann Hecker,a Manhattan psychiatrist whose professional detachment melts faster than butter on a hot bagel.. Sciorra’s strength here is subtle: she grounds the film’s overheated pulp in something resembling emotional reality.
She listens. She absorbs. She frowns just so. She looks like a doctor who truly wants to help, which is why it’s all the more alarming when she starts having nightmares inspired by her patient’s fantasies. Sciorra walks the line between professional duty and personal vulnerability. You believe her as a doctor; you believe her as a woman in over her head. Without her, the whole movie would tip over into parody. With her, it becomes a dark fairy tale where the princess keeps finding dragons in her appointment book.
Unger: The Patient Who Eats the Movie Alive
Enter Deborah Unger as Eve Abergray, the kind of patient psychiatrists fantasize about at conferences but never admit. Eve is an art dealer with a voice like silk and a libido that could power half of SoHo. In her sessions, she describes her sadomasochistic encounters with the relish of a fat chick reading a dessert menu: bondage, nooses, the thrill of almost dying and almost climaxing.
Unger makes these confessions hypnotic. She doesn’t just whisper in the dark; she purrs in broad daylight. Every time she’s on screen, she bends the movie toward herself. You can see Sciorra’s Ann trying desperately to remain neutral, to respond with phrases like, “Tell me more about that,” but Unger’s Eve has already hijacked the session. She strips during therapy, admits she wants to perform for Ann, and smiles with the kind of challenge that says: I know you’re supposed to be the professional, but let’s see how long that lasts.
In another film, Eve would be the femme fatale who shows up for fifteen minutes and then dies offscreen. Here, Unger makes her unforgettable. Her eventual murder sets the plot in motion, but the movie never quite recovers from her absence. She is the flame; everyone else is just moths circling.
The Other Players in This Lusty Chess Match
The men orbiting Sciorra and Unger are fine, but make no mistake, this is their show. Jamey Sheridan, as Doug the suspicious pilot, wears his bland looks like a disguise. Anthony LaPaglia, as Detective Morgenstern, provides a running commentary that doubles as audience skepticism. John Leguizamo, as the doomed artist Johnny, plays unhinged with such sweaty abandon that you wonder if he spray painted the walls during lunch breaks.
And then there’s Alan Alda. He plays Dr. Leo Green, Sciorra’s mentor turned stalker, and eventually the film’s big bad. Watching Alda bludgeon Jill Clayburgh with a wine bottle is like discovering Mister Rogers moonlights as a serial killer. It’s horrifying and yet, in the film’s twisted logic, perfectly fitting.
Why the Film Works (When It Shouldn’t)
The genius—or the madness—of Whispers in the Dark is that it leans so heavily on the intimacy between Sciorra and Unger. Their therapy sessions are the heart of the movie. Forget the whodunit structure, forget the plot twists that pile up like cabs on Madison Avenue. What you remember is Unger describing a man tightening a noose around her neck, and Sciorra’s face, caught between clinical detachment and personal unease.
Those sessions are erotic, yes, but they’re also about power: who controls the room, who controls the narrative, who’s the real subject and who’s the observer. Sciorra plays the professional, but Unger plays the human id. Together, they give the film a crackling tension that no murder mystery could sustain alone.
The Humor in the Madness
Let’s be honest: this movie is ridiculous. Every single man in Ann’s life turns out to be a lunatic, a liar, or a killer. Eve’s death triggers a chain of melodramatic revelations that would embarrass General Hospital. And the final confrontation, where Ann fends off Alan Alda with a boat hook, is camp enough to deserve its own drinking game.
But that’s part of the fun. Erotic thrillers of the ’90s thrived on excess so I’m judging it in that regard. They weren’t about realism; they were about fantasies gone sour. And Whispers in the Dark understands that its greatest asset is not the logic of its plot, but the spectacle of intelligent women trying to navigate a world where every man is a potential murderer and every confession could be foreplay.
Conclusion: A Guilty Pleasure Worth Confessing
Yes, the critics hated it. Yes, Alan Alda got a Razzie nod. Yes, the box office receipts barely covered the catering. But Whispers in the Dark deserves a second look—not as failed Hitchcock, but as successful melodrama.
Annabella Sciorra anchors the madness, Deborah Unger electrifies it, and together they turn a messy erotic thriller into something magnetic. Watching them is like watching a match held over gasoline: you know it’s going to explode, but you can’t look away.
