Scissors (1991)
It's pretty understandable why Scissors, a sub-basement ripoff of Roman Polanski's Repulsion, barely caused a ripple when it was originally released in 1991: it's dumb, desperate and hopelessly dull despite a hard-working performance by star Sharon Stone.
Stone plays a reclusive and frigid young woman who, as the film opens, is attacked in the elevator of her apartment by a man with a red beard. Luckily for her, she cuts him with the new pair of scissors she just purchased, so the injured man flees leaving her shaken. Also lucky for her, her neighbors, a couple of twin brothers played by the dependably wooden Steve Railsback come to her aid and eventually befriend her. Good Steve is clean-cut, wears suits and is polite to a fault, Bad Steve is surly, long-haired and is confined to a wheelchair. It's a good thing they have these obvious visual clues to distinguish which Steve is speaking, otherwise you'd never know. Also in the mix is Ronny Cox as Stone's shrink who is trying to get to the root of her issues with men (more on that later) and wonders if possibly the incident in the elevator never happened.
So, is Stone nucking futs? Well, she keeps periodically seeing (or hallucinating) men with red beards and feeling that she is constantly getting ready to be attacked and molested. And, speaking of molestation, it seems that the root of Stone's issues comes from the fact she was pawed on as a child by her father who, get this, had a red beard and wore a pig puppet on his hand (!?) and then was subsequently murdered by her mother.
The final act of Scissors involves Stone being tricked into visiting a fortress-like apartment, getting locked in for several days with no way to escape (no phone, locked doors, unbreakable glass, etc.) and losing her mind due to the fact that a strange red-bearded man is dead in the bedroom with scissors in his back and a there is a caged raven that constantly cries, "You killed him! You killed him!" What in the hell is going on here? Is Cox really trying to help Stone? Are one of the Steves somehow involved? Does it really matter? In any case, the script finally explains it all, but none of it really makes any logical sense whatsoever. It's just kind of a tiresome, "Ha ha! It was me! And this is why!" cheeseball solution that no one in the audience could have any hope of ever being able to solve for themselves.
The nutty finale makes it seem like Scissors would be the kind of fun/bad thriller that was, at least, entertaining, but unfortunately it takes a long, looooooong, time to get there. Up until then it's just a waiting game, trudging through endless psychotherapy sessions and scenes of budding 'romance' between Stone and Bad Steve. Aside from watching Stone valiantly try to develop something out of the mire, there just isn't much to recommend Scissors.