BAD INFLUENCE

Michael is a successful “yuppie” marketing analyst living in a posh L.A. apartment surrounded by state-of-the-art electronic toys. But, the price of success: a stomach disorder, pressure from his fiancee and a missing corporate file waylaid by a conniving business associate. This adds up to a mid-day crisis causing him to flee to a seaside bar where he meets Alex.

Alex is a handsome drifter who plays life only by his own rules, which basically means no rules at all. He has no ties to anyone, no visible means of support and no morals. Alex is the kind of guy someone like Michael knows he should stay away from — someone who is a bad influence.

Honing in on Michael’s vulnerabilities, Alex takes him from the daytime Los Angeles world he knows, the offices, the beach, the sunshine, to the dark and seedy nighttime Los Angeles that Alex knows, a world laced with laughter, loose women, booze, and drugs.

Nights begin to run into days and when Michael awakens with blood on his hands, not knowing how it happened or to whom, he realizes his adventure has turned into a nightmare. Fearing for his life, Michael utilizes the lessons Alex has taught him to trap Alex in his own game.

The film is filled with all that is evil: profanities, obscenities, lying, stealing, violence, cold-blooded murder, revenge, drug use, drunk driving and drunkenness, graphic nudity, and sexual perversion. Rob Lowe shows bad judgment in BAD INFLUENCE for the character he has created, one without a conscience who is pathologically unable to distinguish right from wrong.

Michael, too, shows cowardice in fleeing from life’s problems that the psalmist mentions in Psalm 55:6. “I said, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of the dove! I would fly away and be at rest — I would flee far away and stay in the desert.'” David, like Michael, longed for a quiet retreat to escape it all. That being out of the question, he cast his cares on the Lord, whom he knew he could trust. However, BAD INFLUENCE, wicked as it is, does not acknowledge that possibility in even the remotest way.

“Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 97:10).