Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) and his girlfriend Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) are stretching their finances to the limit to buy a San Francisco house. They need to rent the two ground floor apartments to cover the mortgage. They rent one apartment to the nice Watanabes. The other one they rent to Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton). Carter seems to be well-off initially. Things turn quickly. Carter never pays rent. He causes problems. The law is on his side. The couple gets Stephanie MacDonald (Laurie Metcalf) as their lawyer.Matthew Modine is so angry and so unlikeable that it's hard to root for him. He keeps yelling at everybody and it happens very quickly after the first hurdle. Michael Keaton is a nice creepy villain. It's somewhat a horror. The problem is that it's not a fun horror. The thrills are derived from annoyance. It is very good at being an uncomfortable watch. It's actually a relief when Modine takes a backseat to Griffith. For what it is, this is expertly made.

Pacific Heights has characters - at least in the male leads - who are unlikable and/or are rather underdeveloped. To be sure, John Schlesinger casting Michael Keaton was a smart move: the man has screen charisma to burn, certainly at that time in 1989/1990, when he was hot off his two most iconic performances (Batman/Beetlejuice, both hard not to quote at times during this movie when those characters got at their most crazed). But I wonder what the thought was with Matthew Modine; I couldn't tell whether he was mis-cast, or if the part as just crummy. In any case, Modine and Melanie Griffith are boyfriend/girlfriend, expecting a baby, and with a new house right in the heart of San Francisco that they need to rent out some levels to. Due to a misunderstanding they miss out on the Nice Black Guy (darn, there goes his application down the stairs, and another plot device) and instead get Keaton's Carter Hayes as a tenant.But oh, what about the lease, or the rent? The mind games start immediately, and that's kind of a problem with the story. If the screenwriter took a little time to develop this man as somewhat of a threat, maybe make him interesting at first, perhaps even relatable, then gradually turn the screws in a gaslight fashion on these landlords, the suspense would be more palpable. As it is, Carter is basically a nut almost from minute one, and while one would think the audience should be on the Happy-But-Not-Now couple's side, Drake's reaction is that of super-high hysterics. He yells, he curses, he's played at level-11 in a manner that it's no wonder Carter can get the upper hand on this couple. Oh, and then there's the rather extreme things done to the place to make it foreclose-able: drills late at night, cockroach breeding to infestate, and other creepy moments.In other words, Pacific Heights is not one for subtlety. This doesn't mean the movie isn't entertaining on a completely trashy, sort of tasteless level. Scene after scene shows things getting worse for the good guys while the 'bad' guy gets away with this. And yet, this is in Planet Movie Land that he's doing this. So many questions get raised that the audience just has to accept when it comes to the laws regarding how a tenant can f*** with the landords and visa-versa; doesn't a, I don't know, LEASE have some major factor here? At first I couldn't figure out what Carter's game was, though once I realized it (and thanks to a double check via Ebert's review) it got clearer about this man's plot of divide, foreclose and conquer. And yet... who IS this antagonist? There are parts given some clarity in the third act, and it does start to get better as the proverbial tables get turned. And actually Griffith and Keaton turn in excellent performances, for what they're given to do. But the film has the subtlety of a baleen hammer, and the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer makes it pretty damn dated (moody saxophone, anyone?) I think there's a lot of potential with this sort of idea of one man entering a couple's life and making it into a living hell; right now in theaters we have The Gift by Joel Edgerton, which is a much more clever update of this kind of premise, though mostly because things make logical sense with the plot. A lot happens in this movie, at least it feels that way in the first hour, but the main characters either act clueless or rather stupidly, with Carter as this weird psycho without any explanation. This isn't to say everything should've been spelled out, but a little more character clarity on the part of Carter - or a more gradual progression of the character mechanics - might have made it a legitimately good movie.As it is, Pacific Heights is at best a guilty pleasure, a flick that's not dated well but certainly has a lot of fun moments in watching these actors play these sorta-yuppies in this would-be cat/mouse game. Did I mention how much fun it is quoting Keaton's "LET'S GET NUTS?!" in the climax? 5.5/10

I'd give it a 0 if I could. Started out with a perfectly good love scene and then BOOM! You're stuck in a couple's nightmare. Why the heck would anyone want to see this? Its just irritating to watch people who shouldn't be renting property to anybody. They are set-up from the beginning to fail. It is painful to get through every single minute of it. Even when MG looks like she's turning the tables on MK you cannot assume it will go well. It is not at all what we thought this movie would be. MK impressive as a bad guy? Who the crap cares? The movie was too painful to watch. I don't care home many good names are attached to this loser. DO not watch it. I warned you.

This 1990 film about new landlords doing battle with the tenant from hell could have been a good psychological thriller; sadly, an interesting idea was hampered by poor execution. The film certainly did well at the box office and Schlesinger makes good use of the locations in San Francisco and Palm Springs; that said, the characters are so underdeveloped that it's difficult to care about what happens to them. As far as the look of the film is concerned the budget's been used well; would that one could say the same for the content.Drake (Modine) and Patty (Griffith) are young, un-married and upwardly mobile. They move into a Victorian house in San Francisco which they plan to renovate. The payments are beyond their means but the property's been divided into three apartments so by combining their savings with rent from the other two apartments, Drake and Patty decide that they can manage.Before long one of the apartments is occupied by the Watanabes (a kindly Japanese/American couple) but Drake and Patty haven't been entirely truthful about their financial position and in order to make the monthly payments on the house they need another tenant as quickly as possible.Enter Carter Hayes (Keaton).Hayes is expensively dressed, drives a very expensive car and is very polite; the answer to Drake and Patty's prayers. Admittedly for someone so apparently wealthy he's strangely reluctant to undergo a credit check but so what? Needs must when you are up to your eyes in debt; besides, he may be polite to the point of creepiness but he's got references, he's come along at just the right time and in return for waiving the credit check he's willing to pay six month's rent up front by wire transfer; what could be better?Now, there's an old saying about what happens when someone or something seems too good to be true.Yes, that's the one.Sure enough, Hayes is a nightmare; he moves in without permission, bringing a slack-jawed weirdo with him (together they carry out unauthorized do-it-yourself work on the apartment until the small hours of the morning), the promised rent shows no sign of appearing and the noise (plus an army of cockroaches) forces the Watanabes to move out.Hayes, however, has absolutely no intention of doing likewise; from the moment he moves in on Drake and Patty, he's waging psychological warfare. He won't even answer the door to the apartment and goes so far as to change the locks. He also knows how to play the legal system to his advantage and when Drake cuts off the power, he calls the police and it's Drake who finds himself on the wrong side of the law.This pattern is repeated throughout the film and is, as it turns out, Hayes' usual modus operandi: move into rented accommodation, refuse to pay the rent, make a nuisance of himself, push the landlord over the edge and then play the victim, continuing this pattern until a happy household has been destroyed.There is, to begin with at least, an air of mystery about Hayes; what does he do apart from unauthorized building work? Is he, perhaps, a satanist? A serial killer? Both?No.Hayes, we discover, is a loser, serial wrongdoer and general ne'er-do-well who is unhappy because he's been disowned by his family so in his mind, nobody else should be happy either.That's it.Michael Keaton plays creepy-and-slightly-menacing like nobody else but for him to be scary the menace needs to come to the fore and that simply never happens. Even when he's seen sitting in the dark twirling razor blades, we don't get the feeling that he's going to do anything with them: at least, not to anybody other than himself. He comes across as more pathetic than anything else.Without going into too much detail from here on, Hayes is not above a spot of identity theft; having already assumed the identity of the property's former landlord (Hayes' real name is James Danforth), he pretends to be Drake in order to use his credit cards; however he is soon found out by Patty and all Drake has to do to stop him is freeze the joint account. With that done, Danforth's 'scam' unravels and it's downhill for him from then on.I won't give away the ending but it is a happy one, should you be curious enough to watch this interesting misfire of a film.4 out of ten.