Pacific Heights is another movie about yuppies in danger. This time, Drake Goodman (Matthew Modine) and Patty Palmer (Melanie Griffith) co-purchase and restore a Victorian house in San Francisco, then rent out the downstairs apartment to pay the bills.
The new tenant is Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton). He can’t give credit references because, well, he’s an attorney and he has some client confidences to protect. And he can’t pay a deposit because, well, he only has a few thousand bucks in cash and his bank is in Texas. But Drake lets him have the place anyway.
It turns out, Carter – played with an unsettling and believable pathology by Keaton – is a psycho who makes his living by forcing people out of their property.
The law is on the side of the tenant, at least in San Francisco, and Carter has mastered the system.
He moves in, never pays rent, refuses to leave, and turns his landlords’ lives into a living hell – and the owners move out.
Drake and Patty find their house crawling with cockroaches Carter has bred, and are kept awake at night by strange banging and thumping sounds coming from his room.
Mad with rage at Carter’s nonpayment and strange habits of never answering the door and constantly disappearing, Drake attacks Carter one day, and finds himself up for assault, potentially owing his tenant far more than he is due in back payment for the apartment.
To make matters worse, Patty miscarries the baby she was expecting, and when they finally come to evict Hayes, he has disappeared.
There are some genuinely scary and suspenseful sequences, thanks to the irony and polish of John Schlesinger’s direction, but the real horror here is the insane laws protecting the rights of tenants, even when they are homicidal maniacs.
Patty Palmer
Melanie Griffith Drake Goodman
Matthew Modine Carter Hayes
Michael Keaton Toshio Watanabe
Mako Mira Watanabe
Nobu McCarthy Stephanie MacDonald
Laurie Metcalf Lou Baker
Carl Lumbly Dennis Reed
Dorian Harewood Greg
Luca Bercovici Florence Peters
Tippi Hedren Liz Hamilton
Sheila McCarthy Bennett Fidlow
Jerry Hardin District Attorney
James Staley
He moves in, never pays rent, refuses to leave, and turns his landlords’ lives into a living hell – and the owners move out.
