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LYING EYES is a 1996 TV stalker movie about a high school cheerleader and a silky-smooth creep. The cheerleader is well played by Cassidy Rae, and our Vincent Irizarry does a stunningly wicked turn as the creep. The film’s fast-paced, spooky, and deliciously evil.

We begin with a sexy cheerleading routine at a California high school, seductive camera angles showing us lots of skin. Slick attorney Derek Bradshaw is in the stands viewing all that delectable flesh, and he zeroes in on Amy Miller, the quintessential sun-kissed blond beauty. Derek’s a babe himself, with that luscious ebony hair and those piercing dark eyes. He’s also way too old for Amy at 33, but that doesn’t stop the scheming lawyer. He conveniently bumps Amy’s car at a light and suavely lets her know he’s wealthy, it was his fault, and she should take the car to his garage for repair. When Amy picks up her auto, she finds that not only has Derek replaced her radio with a CD player, but this hunk of charm wants a dinner date with her.

Now, Amy’s a smart girl. But she’s only just 18 and no match for Derek. She has a loving but busy single mother who’s never around to talk. Her best friend Dana is wary but in awe of her conquest. Amy’s prime for someone with all the smooth moves of a cheetah and twice as fast. Dana’s coed sister, Jenn, tries to warn Amy off, but Amy tells her if two people click intellectually and they turn each other on, too, welllll… The next thing you know, Derek’s showering Amy with attention at dinner. When they say good night, Derek’s intense gaze pins Amy like a mounted butterfly on velvet. His finger skates across her cheek before he kisses her lightly on the mouth. Tenderly, his finger skims her lips. Derek says he wants to show her stars though the telescope at his beach house for their next date. Amy’s a goner.

The plot swings into gear at the beach house. Derek has a present for Amy, an, um, sexy teddy. When Amy shyly models the flimsy bit of fabric, Derek gives her the perfect kiss, tenderly telling her "We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I could just hold you, that’s all." Derek’s a master of the sweet caress, the compelling gaze, the breathe-in-your-essence kiss. As he and Amy make love, a spooky camera shot indicates an anonymous someone watching them smooch through the window.

LYING EYES whizzes by, a fun blend of predictable and unpredictable. Predictable is Amy and Derek’s romance. It slowly dawns on the love-struck teen that Derek’s never free weekends. That he takes her only to out-of-the-way places. That his gifts are too lavish. She takes a jaunt to Derek’s house where she sees his two darling children and his lovely wife. Amy confronts Derek, but he talks her into continuing the affair with sweet lies about needing time to break it to his spouse. There’s little insight into Derek. The most VI gets to do as far as sinking his teeth into character comes at a bar where he tells a friend "Everything we do is for women. The clothes we wear, the car we buy. No better aphrodisiac than wrapping a beautiful woman around your little finger." Derek’s predator eyes gleam as he watches Amy enter the bar in the slinky dress he bought her. A possessive smile quirks his lip. Think David pre-basement, but not as deep, dark, or conflicted.

What’s unpredictable about LYING EYES are the stalking and harassment scenes. Someone watches Derek and Amy hit the sheets through a country-inn window. Amy’s clothes are slashed in her high school locker. Amy starts to suspect Derek’s wife after Dana says a lady was asking about her before cheerleader practice. Dana’s sister Jenn is supportive, counseling Amy not to go to the cops or it’ll get all over the tabloids. But the stalking continues: in a deserted house, the high school locker-room sauna, even after a fed-up Amy tells Derek it’s all over.

The plot darkens when Derek won’t take no for an answer, and the stalker won’t stop either. They’re both after her now, Derek popping up all over the place, the stalker writing a scary lipstick message on the locker-room mirror, pushing Amy in front of a truck in a parking lot. One-note spooky piano music becomes a familiar theme song, and Amy’s slowly going nuts. It’s not until Amy tells Derek off in a restaurant and the stalker almost pushes her car through a cliffside guard rail that Amy finally blurts everything out to Mom. Before she does, we see that the stalker is none other than Jenn, driving Derek’s wife’s stolen Jaguar. We also see Jenn sneak into Amy’s room, model the teddy gift, spritz on Amy’s perfume, and make a hang-up call on Derek’s long-suffering wife Elizabeth. We get a hint of motive when Jenn tells Amy that she knew someone like Amy once upon a time, used and abused by a lying married man, a man like Derek …

Events hit light speed after Mom finds out. The mother/daughter duo take on the cops and Derek in short order. A disgusted Elizabeth begins divorce proceedings after police questioning. But it’s the plucky Amy who turns the tables on Derek when she seductively tries to set up the predator at his own beach house and ferret out the name of her stalker. VI is chilling as he plays a snake with no depth and less heart, intent on only one thing. Not until Amy runs out and drives home does she meet her nemesis Jenn in a car ride from hell.

The very best part of LYING EYES is its ending, some months later. Not the high school graduation and a proud mother taking pictures of Amy, once again a well-adjusted teenager. The best part shows a slightly scruffy Derek climb the bleachers to watch high school cheerleaders go through their practice. He whips off his sunglasses and smiles a closed-mouth smile at the pretty sight in front of his lying eyes. The look in those eyes is that of a connoisseur, his appetite just whetted.

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 in the many roles he has played throughout the years.

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for giving us hours of entertainment.