Susan Granger’s review of “THE APARTMENT COMPLEX” (SHOWTIME TV)
On Sunday, October 31, at 8 PM on Showtime TV, horror maestro Tobe Hooper presents a quirky, psychological mystery, “The Apartment Complex,” starring Chad Lowe as a young grad student who has just moved from the Midwest to study psychology at UCLA. Broke and living out of his car, he’s hired by Jon Polito, as the malevolent Dr. Caligari, to manage the Wonder View Apartments in Hollywood in exchange for rent, despite warnings from Obba Babatunde, playing a homeless philosopher who lurks on the front curb. Inspired more by Stephen King than Frank Lloyd Wright, there’s something very strange about the Wonder View Apartments. Certainly the tenants are an oddball assortment of neurotics and psychotics, ideal specimens for a master thesis on abnormal psychology. There’s Faye Masterson, a haunted-looking beauty with her hot-tempered, insanely jealous boyfriend, Patrick Warburton; Amanda Plummer, an over-sexed psychic; Tyra Banks and Gina Mari, stunt actresses who dabble in martial arts; R. Lee Ermey, a paranoid, reclusive ex-government agent; creepy twins Jimmy and David Schuelke; and Charles Martin Smith as the agoraphobic with a dark, terrible secret. The horror starts when Lowe discovers a dead body in the murky swimming pool. Detectives Ron Canada and Miguel Sandoval figure he’s their only suspect, tormenting and bullying him as other strange events plague the tenants. All the psycho-babble he’s been learning in grad school comes in handy as the wise-beyond-his-years student begins doling out free therapy as he zeros in on the real killer. On the Granger Made-for-Television Gauge, “The Apartment Complex” is a sinister 6. It’s Halloween hell in exchange for free rent.
