The Bedroom Window’s central mystery is not the identity of its killer, who stalks the streets of Baltimore raping and murdering young women he spots in bars. Nor is it how Steve Guttenberg’s Terry Lambert, the slick protégé of a construction executive, will clear his name after becoming hopelessly ensnared in the resulting investigation. It is, instead, how Guttenberg gets Isabelle Huppert’s Sylvia Wentworth, his boss’s wife, to come home with him. To that question, I maintain, writer-director Curtis Hanson provides no reasonable answer.
Was she enchanted after seeing him roller-skate his way through the Village People classic Can’t Stop the Music in his tightest pants and shorts? (Guttenberg doesn’t strut his stuff on wheels here, but ditches his clothes more than once.) Did the greatest screen actress of her generation secretly adore Police Academy? In the end, it doesn’t matter: The Bedroom Window is made more interesting by its unusual casting. And, just as importantly, it holds a special place in my heart for its repeated use of Robert Palmer’s “Hyperactive.”
My unabashed fondness of this dated ’80s song in a dated ’80s movie is sentimental in nature. “Hyperactive” reminds me of all the great loves of my life, from the one who danced wildly in her pajamas each week to the Mad Men theme to the one who “puts her makeup on at 6 am,” then “goes to work, gets home and puts it on again.” Window’s resident whirling dervish is Terry himself, an affable schemer eager to climb not only the corporate ladder but an icy Sylvia, whose philandering is more a byproduct of boredom than passion.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
