Every once in a while, I will encounter a picture I categorize as a “laserdisc movie”, even if I never owned a copy in that format. I apply this designation to movies of a kind that largely comprised the laserdisc library I once had, usually small indie films from the late 80s and early 90s, usually bought on the cheap from the clearance bin of a Camelot Music. Although I had not seen it until now, 1986’s Positive I.D. is that kind of movie.
Though competently filmed, this is clearly an independent production and that helped sell it for me. Typical of this fare, all the performances are good, though I never completely believed any of them. I can’t explain why I felt that way, but it didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying this.
This is entirely a showcase for Stephanie Rascoe Myers, whose filmography on IMDB is surprisingly brief. I thought she would have gone onto bigger things after this, but such is the nature of the beast that is the industry.
She plays a wife and mother who had been the victim of a brutal rape. Yes, all rape is brutal, but we will eventually see large, jagged scars from the attack on a breast and the inside of a thigh.
The assault made news, and we overhear on a television a follow-up story on that attack a year later. Way to punish the victim, local news. And the new element of the story is her assailant is getting out of prison after only seven months, so there’s our sorry justice system also punishing the victim.
She doesn’t need the extra stress. There’s an alarming assortment of pill bottles on her nightstand, which her neighbor (Laura Lane) steals from when she’s not trying to steal Myers’s husband (John S. Davies).
I’m not sure if she is really the center of neighborhood gossip, but the possibility she is prevents her from going to a party. She tells her husband that anybody there would just want to “come see the neighborhood whore”. He responds with, “Damnit, Julie, that’s all behind you now.” Um…dude, are you saying you think she used to be a whore?
One night, she sees a news story about a con artist who used copies of birth certificates to commit fraud using various identities. According the story, anybody can obtain somebody’s birth certificate if they have the person’s date and place of birth. I wonder if that was ever true and, if it was, whether it is still.
Myers gathers names and birth dates from the cemetery and gets birth certificates for many of those people. She whittles these down to people she could possibly impersonate, and obtains identification and even credit cards under these additional identities. Using these identities, she will set in motion a ruse complicated enough to surprise me when it actually comes together in the end.
One unexpected aspect of this picture is how funny it is. She goes to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and has a seemingly inexhaustible list of questions she asks of an increasingly frustrated employee who is just trying to close up for the day. This guy gets so angry one would think the phrase “going postal” could have been “going Bureau of Vital Statistics”, though that doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Another scene I laughed out loud over was when Myers tries to prepare a chicken according to a complicated recipe she is trying to follow on a TV cooking show. She is quickly overwhelmed by the glut of information, and just tosses the bare chicken into the over. Then we see the charred carcass at dinner that night, where Davies tries to feign enthusiasm, saying how delicious it is, and asking her what it’s called. She looks genuinely confused and says, “Chicken?”
Positive I.D. was an unexpected pleasure. It is the kind of film one would see have seen in art house cinemas at the time. Or, in my case, years later on a discounted laserdisc. Fortunately for curious viewers, what might otherwise might have been lost over the years has been preserved on blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Recommended.
Dir: Andy Anderson
Starring Stephanie Rascoe Myers, John S. Davies, Steven Fromholz