Movies revisited: Zandalee (1991)

Zandalee is an erotic thriller from 1991 with Nicolas Cage, Erika Anderson and Judge Reinhold. I remembered it to be one of the worst movies I had ever seen in the 90s, so it was time to watch it again. Was it really that bad?

The story

Apparently, Zandalee was inspired on Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin but the story is very cliché and could be inspired on just about anything really. Workoholic guy is married to beautiful woman, beautiful woman is sexually frustrated and falls for the husband’s ‘artistic free-spirited’ friend, beautiful woman is naked during about 3/4 of the movie, the whole thing ends up in an unhealthy triangle relationship.

Cage played a similar role in Moonstruck in 1987 (which was a real nice movie) as the free-spirited guy who messed up the relationship of his brother. The role of Cage in Zandalee is a ridicule version of that role. He now plays Johnny and in Moonstruck he played Ronny 🙂

What are they doing?

Zandalee is set in New Orleans, which is about the only good thing in the movie. That and Steve Buscemi who appears for a few seconds every now and then. I did not really get why but it’s always good to have some Buscemi in a movie, especially in Zandalee.

There are loads of ‘what the f***’ moments in the movie. Like what are they doing, why are they doing it and what do they think they are doing? I guess they were going for an artistic movie but it’s more of a bizarre comedy in the end. Some parts of the movie got me laughing so hard and other parts got me utterly confused. Plus the movie is really slow. And yes, there are loads of naked Erika Anderson (Zandalee) scenes. Loads. Yes. More than you hope for.

No big screen

Zandalee never made it to the cinema in the US, it was released straight to video which is understandable. Erika Anderson is a terrible actress and Zandalee must be the worst Nicolas Cage film to date (and my god, that hair).

Did you watch Zandalee?