Sean Young was molested by her step father (Chelcie Ross) as a child. He was a bad man. Then he apparently died along with her mother. But the terrible memories have haunted Young all these years. She is now a police sketch artist and she's called in on a case in which a little girl named Bria (Hertford) was kidnapped and held in a closet by yet another child molester. The girl manages to get free and when Young sketches the face that the girl is trying to describe, it turns out to be the face of her evil step father.The local cop in charge of the case is sympathetic but, like the overbearing FBI agents, he attributes the likeness to the penetrance of Young's traumatic memories.Bria, meanwhile, continues to insist that the face is correct except "something's wrong." What's wrong, as it turns out, is that the face of her kidnapper is about twenty years older. Otherwise, it's a dead ringer for Young's step dad. (Hint, hint.) Young solves the conundrum. It's her step father alright, only he didn't die. He strangled Young's mother and was sent to Leavenworth for murder. Now that he's been released, he's at it again. And he still has his eye on Sean Young, although why he's still interested in her, now that she's a grown woman, however succulent, remains a mystery. Perhaps it's love.The police guard her house, using her as bait. But at a critical moment they're called away on a wild goose chase, or maybe a red herring chase -- ALL of the many cops are called away. Not one is left behind to protect Young and Bria when the wicked step father inevitably shows up.His appearance is very bad news because he appears to have plans for both the grown Young and the ungrown Bria. Young is about to be strangled while duct-taped in a chair but Bria sneaks a pistol into her hand and the wicked step father takes one in the gut.As in all modern monster movies, this hardly slows him down. He pursues the two of them through the deserted rural house, a rabid tomcat after two scurrying mice. They hide here, they hide there, they freeze into tonic immobility. It doesn't matter. There is a final struggle between Young and Daddy, who seems more vigorous than ever, until she finally dispatches him with a great big knife. This is all so formulaic that I was a little surprised he didn't leap back to life after collapsing for the last time.I hated the little girl. Her scream sounds like a boatswain's pipe. I believe it was heard by bats for miles around. I hated her name too. No more girls named "Bria", okay? And no more Gillians or Jillians either. And no more Ambers or Megans. Enough is enough. Barbara is okay, or Linda, or even Abigail or Dolly. Let's get back to basics, shall we? Sean Young is no better and no worse than usual. She has a nose that looks deliberately designed. A little gratuitous nudity might have helped somewhere along the line.The script is hamstrung by the formula it must articulate. Certain ritual events are demanded and there's no way around them. For instance, there can be no pathos associated with the evildoer. He must be dead-on evil. The script allows the child molester who is the red herring to whine for a while about how helpless he is in the face of his desires. (Cf., "M".) It also gives him an opportunity to weep and sob and overact in the most outrageous manner. (Cf., a much more convincing display by William Hickey in "The Boston Strangler," from which this performance is chiefly derived.) The red herring happens to be innocent of any crime except, towards the end, when his function in the narrative requires him to threaten Young with a knife while in a state of utter despair, half in love with easeful death. Nevertheless, innocent or not, he dies too. This morality is unforgiving.One interesting detail provided by the dilatory FBI man. Child molesters at Leavenworth are on the lowest rung of the ladder. The other inmates beat them and brand them on their forearms. "It's their way of administering justice," says Mister FBI. He expresses this in a tone of some satisfaction, and the unthinking audience is inclined to agree with him that child abusers deserve whatever they get. Yet somebody -- sometime, somewhere -- should ask exactly who is at the TOP of that ladder, and is what they've done better than what the child molester has done? The acting, in general, is no better than should be expected, but the script gives us at least one sign of its writer having challenged the expectations of the genre. Young and the handsome young local cop in charge of the case may fall in love. They may even sleep together. But the cop doesn't try any hanky-panky and Young thanks him for it the next morning.The film has two chief virtues. Since the savvy viewer knows almost exactly what's coming next, seeing it has a ritualistic quality, and therefore is as comforting as a church service. And there is a genuine moral to this story too. No matter how poor the movie is, if it incorporates an element of child abuse, it will still make a nickel.

***SPOILERS***Sean Young as Chicago police sketch artist Gwen McGerrall looks so bored to tears in the made for TV movie "Evil Has a Face" that at times she looks as if she's about to nod off and pass out right there and then.Given an assignment to travel to far off Redmond Minnesota to help the local police track down a child kidnapper Gwen is about as interested in going up there as she would be in going to the Arctic but does it anyway. As we soon learn Gwen has very personal reasons for going to Redmond beside all her expenses being paid by the Redmond Police Department. It's there in the "Land of Ten Thousands Lakes" where Gwen was brought up.Gwen had been abused by her step father Henry Wills McGarrell, Cheicie Ross, who died in a car crash back in 1964 when Gwen was five years old. It was that the unknown serial child killer and kidnapper who's on the loose in that part of the state that reminds Glewn of her long dead "Daddy" whom she hates with a passion.With the help of local Redmond cop Tom Sawyer-yes that's his real name- played William R. Moses and kidnap victim Bria, Brighton Hertfort, Gwen gets wind of who the serial killer and kidnapper really is! Or does she! The evidence that Gwen comes up with later turns out to be bogus in that Bria, the only survivor of the serial killer,described him to be Gwen's own father who been dead for at least 30 years!***SPOILER ALERT*** It soon turns out that Bria accurately described the person who kidnapped her, which Gwen did a police sketch of, but she was off in how old he was supposed to be by almost a generation!The movie started getting itself lost in time and space by the time Gwen finally realized whom the mysterious serial killer was. In that it showed that Gwen wasn't anywhere near the sharp and smart cookie that we were lead to believe, by both the Chicago and Redmond Police Departments, that she was. The killer himself was anything but a master criminal in that he was so out in the open and clumsy in his actions it was almost a miracle that he wasn't spotted and caught before he committed his first of a string of some dozen crimes.Even though she was anything but convincing in her acting I have to say that Sean Young, as cold and icy looking as she was, was a real turn on even, it gets pretty cold up there in Minnesota in the wintertime, with enough clothes on to withstand 30 degree below zero wind gusts.

If you are looking for a really bad movie you just wanna watch to make the time pass, this is the movie for you. It's not very exciting. After watching a few minutes you'll figure out what's gonna happen next and how it's all gonna end. You won't get tricked. They feed you the whole story with a little spoon. It's not that hard. The movie is about a woman who lives by drawing criminal faces. A girl get taken away and when she gets back she explains the face for the drawer. The drawer get shocked when she sees the face she just drew. It's the face of her stepfather that died many years ago. But soon she discovers he's not really dead. He's after her. She tells that to the police man. They fall in love. How many times haven't we seen that before? The story is weak, the acting is bad, and there's really no point in the story at all. I really don't recommend this movie.

Good yarn about a series of child molestations/murders taking place in a small Minnesota town. When the most recent victim goes missing the police call in a sketch artist who has had success in bringing criminals to justice with her detailed drawings. When a witness is found and the sketch is completed the artist is confounded because she thinks she knows the felon. A manhunt is started for the man leading the authorities down a road to a series of misleading conclusions. Exciting, although unrealistic, finale.