Matty coos and cuddles a cracking thriller from director Mark L. Lester and scripter Larry Cohen. 

A countdown for you: 

Although Mark L. Lester’s sixth project with Trimark all in all, MISBEGOTTEN (1997) is the producer/director’s fifth pairing with the shingle through his own American World Pictures banner. It was preceded by Extreme Justice (1993) and AWP-ers Night of the Running Man (1995), Public Enemies (1996), The Ex (1996) and Double Take (1997).

Misbegotten is the last of four stalker flicks penned by the mighty Larry Cohen in relatively quick succession — a slate completed by Guilty as Sin (1993), Invasion of Privacy (1996) and The Ex — and the last of three thrillers Lester shot back-to-back-to-back in Canada in conjunction with Maple Leaf B-heroes Cinépix, who’d soon gobble up Trimark when they became Lionsgate. The other Lester/Cinépix joints were The Ex and Double Take. 

Misbegotten is Lester and Cohen’s second and final collaboration following The Ex. As it happens, both films star Nick Mancuso and both stem from novels Lester procured advanced copies of [1].

And last but not least, Misbegotten is the first Lester venture to be issued on rental video in the U.K. by — appropriately — First Independent [2].    

Heavily auteuristic, Misbegotten is a striking artistic achievement for its key creatives.

For Lester, the film is among his finest wares, offering a bold synthesis of signature themes and flourishes. There’s the idea of the uneasy union. Here, it’s at its most raw and sacred: Mancuso and Lysette Anthony essay a married couple buckling under the strain of trying to conceive through IVF. There’s a driven and dynamic antagonist, with Kevin Dillon’s Billy Crapshoot comfortably nestling on the step below Bennett from Commando (1985), Deidre from The Ex, and Peter from Class of 1984 (1982) in Lester’s compelling rogues’ gallery. And conceptually and structurally, Misbegotten unspools in the same escalatory manner as Commando, Class of 1984, Class of 1999 (1990) and Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991), building and building until its awesome, gung-ho finale. As with the bulk of Lester’s oeuvre, the film’s technical credentials are top drawer. 

For Cohen, Misbegotten adheres to his edgy premise, pulp delivery framework. À la the similar Invasion of Privacy (itself a retread of the mercurial maverick’s Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)), the plot – wherein Dillon’s psychotic sperm donor terrorises Mancuso and Anthony – is essentially the inverse of Cohen’s ‘70s classic, It’s Alive (1974). Again, it’s a parent rather than a baby who’s the monster; and Dillon, while falling short of Johnathon Schaech’s skin-crawling turn in Invasion, is excellent as the parasitic yet weirdly sympathetic Crapshoot. Of course, if you’re looking to nitpick, Dillon and Mancuso do appear to be in competition with each other, every scene played bigger and broader than the last. However, brash and flamboyant roles are as much a Cohen staple as provocation and satire — witness: Michael Moriarty in Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985), James Earl Jones in The Ambulance (1990) et al. 

In any case, Dillon and shouty Mancuso’s flagrant mugging occasionally sits at odds with Lester’s more serious approach to the material. Based on the visual allusions and Paul Zaza’s Herrmann-esque score, the helmer is clearly aiming for Taxi Driver (1976) in his depiction of obsession, desire, toxic masculinity and societal alienation [3]. Better suited to Lester’s darker vision is Anthony’s quietly dominating performance. She’s the emotional core of the film, grounding its madness. Moreover, it’s tempting to read her strong and shaded part as the inevitable result of Lester’s American World compatriot — and, indeed, then-wife — Dana Dubovsky’s influence on his output. It’s no coincidence that a lot of the movies the bloke-focused, Howard Hawks-loving Lester made with Dubovsky house some of the most well-rounded women of his career. 

In the states, Misbegotten premiered on HBO on 27th February 1998 — ten days after Double Take’s North American VHS bow — and landed on tape via Trimark’s home video wing four months later, on 23rd June; which, incidentally, was the same day the Cohen-penned Uncle Sam (1996) and the Mancuso-starring Past Perfect (1996) hit shelves.

[1] Misbegotten the novel was written by James Gabriel Berman and published in July 1996.
[2] If you wanted to split hairs — really, really, really split hairs — Lester’s Class of 1999 was bankrolled and issued on British cassette by Vestron, whose U.K. distribution arm actually became First Independent.
[3] Another layer of referentiality: Bernard Herrmann scored Cohen’s It’s Alive.