NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
Hello! And welcome to the part of this newsletter where I aggressively lean into a piece of media so old and obscure it might as well not exist. I like to do this in the hope that I turn out to be the only idiot old enough and dumb enough to have watched a particular film or TV show, so I can say anything I want without sourcing or engaging in even basic logic. It’s really these sorts of scenarios where I really shine. The only time I’m better at making arguments is when I’m alone and talking to myself.
So by now you’ve guessed I’m here to discuss the 1992 classic Love Potion No. 9, starring a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock and Tate Donovan, who has been in more than 100 projects but doesn’t have one I’d consider the iconic Tate Donovan jam. This lighthearted romantic comedy has the distinction of possibly being the rapiest movie ever made, but it’s so darn cutesy and silly you can watch it several times before you realize just how awful it is.
The basic story of this film goes like this: Paul (Donovan) and Diane (Bullock) are super nerdy scientists who have zero love game. They have bad hair, she wears thick glasses, and they have zero rizz and no confidence. Paul’s friends take him to a psychic (played by fucking Ann Bancroft!) who takes pity on him and gives him a small amount of Love Potion Number 8, which she instructs him to mix into water and drink.
Paul is scientifically dubious, but after his cat eats some and inspires every other cat in the neighborhood to go lust crazy, he brings it into the lab. Together he and Diane figure out that it actually works. They split the potion and head off to test it in the real world. This testing takes the form of using the potion on unsuspecting people, who magically become utterly infatuated with Paul or Diane. Each of them have adventures: Diane eventually meets the Prince of England and has a Pretty Woman-esque makeover, magically becoming Hot Babe Bullock simply by combing her hair and taking off her glasses—classic! Paul has many sexual adventures, including a presumably exhausting evening working his way through a sorority house with the potion.
So, this is a horny movie. The problem is that none of the people Paul and Diane boink while enthusiastically testing this potentially carcinogenic potion (for science!) have the ability to consent, so every single one of their lighthearted Potion Adventures is essentially a form of sexual assault.
Yes, we live in No Fun Times when lighthearted jokes about assault and mind control sex are just not funny any more. Boo hoo for us. What’s really remarkable about this awful film is that no one seems to have ever noticed just how awful its central premise is. Paul and Diane selfishly revel in their power to force people to love them and have sex with them, pretty much without a hint of guilt or regret. The film basically takes the position that if anyone was given the power to melt brains into the missionary position they would do it over and over again with a smirk and perhaps an enthusiastic yee-haw, so what’s the problem?
The reason this doesn’t seem as icky in the course of the film as it actually and objectively is comes down to a bit of narrative sleight of hand. Writers are tiny gods in their fictional universes, and the audience only gets to see the stuff the writer allows them to see. In Love Potion No. 9 one of the things we definitely don’t see is how Paul and Diane’s creepy sexcapades affect their victims. There are no shots of weeping sorority girls lining up for therapy, no revelations that the Prince of England is waking up in the middle of the night screaming because his sense of personal security has been thoroughly violated.
That selective focus buries any chance you think about these dark possibilities, but the really brilliant part is that the story does explore the consequences of potion-assisted emotional manipulation and sexual assault. It just does it with the main characters.
Diane is ensnared by a creepy former booty call named Gary (Dale Midkiff), who learns about the potion and purchases the entire supply from the psychic, then uses it to get engaged to Diane, controlling her by instructing her to phone him every few hours so he can reinforce the spell. And Paul encounters a sex worker named Marisa (Mary Mara) he’d seen earlier in the story, who finds the potion and uses it to rob him blind—including his supply of the potion. Marisa continues to plague Paul for the rest of the film as Paul realizes he’s in love with Diane and scrambles to find a way to break the spell.
By giving all the trauma and PTSD of being mind controlled to the main characters, the story neatly accomplishes two things: One, it does, sort of, acknowledge the horror movie at the center of the story. And two, it absolves the two protagonists of their guilt, because they’re the only ones we see punished. It’s kind of a great trick, honestly. But if you think about it for more than five seconds you realize that there really ought to be a few scenes of people waking up, frowning in puzzlement, and then immediately bursting into body-wracking sobs.
Of course, I might just be bitter because if I stumbled on a mind control love potion I would certainly accidentally use it on my cats, and that is a true horror movie premise.
NEXT WEEK: ‘Gen-V’ and not letting reveals congeal.
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