Trapped (1989)

Thanks for the memories!

Let's be realistic.

Amateur movie with Big budget

A Brilliant Conflict

Beloved character actress Kathleen "Event Horizon"/"Twilight Zone: The Movie" Quinlan is trapped in a high-rise office building by some unseen nutcase. Along comes Bruce "Re-Animator" Abbott, an industrial spy, and the two are soon playing cat-and-mouse with the would-be killer. This was a TV movie, and a darned good one for its time. The focus is totally on Quinlan, who played ladies in peril better than anyone except Nancy Allen during the 1980s and 90s. (Quinlan rarely died in her movies, one big exception being "Event Horizon" where her death scene is so realistic and harrowing it is usually trimmed for TV showings, even in today's more permissive broadcast atmosphere.) See TRAPPED for Quinlan. She was one darned sexy lady in her day.

Although this movie undoubtedly is not of any great quality it has stuck with me more than most movies. In the fifteen years since I saw it I have retained not only the broad plot, but some incidentals as well. So what was it that made it all stick with me? Quite simply the heroine Kathleen Quinlan, and not really her per say but the fact that she "saves the day" not her male counter lead. I had never seen a movie, and don't remember many since, that have strong male and female leads where it is the female that gets the glory moment at the end of taking down the protagonist. Sure there are movies with strong female leads that save the day but more often than not if there is a strong male lead beside them, the man gets that honor - not the woman, regardless of her characters strengths, and opportunities to do so. This is probably a sad way to remember a movie, by what so many other movies lack, but despite Trapped's obvious flaws this is something in its credit

Really, this flick is not as bad as the 2 previous commentors would like you to believe. The killer's motive is, simply, not handed to the viewer on a silver platter. You've got to think about it. I swear it's there. And try not to compare it to Die Hard or that Anna Nicole Smith piece of cinematic garbage.I've loved this film since the first time I watched it, back in 1989, when I was barely a teenager. It continues to surprise me like others where you just can't get everything in one viewing, and I have my own copy that I've viewed numerous times.Sure the story line is improbable: homicidal kook and a woman are locked into a 65 story skyscraper. But try and free your mind of movie clutter and enjoy how Fred Walton (the director/writer) tells a story. Watch it alone, with the sound up.

I hate this movie. It is a blatant attempt to rip off "Die Hard", and fails miserably. Some guy is in a building killing everyone. We don't know anything about him, we don't know his motivation, he just apparently wants to kill people. So we have a woman trapped in a building with a killer and MONKEYS. And all this has to fill a couple of hours. The plot has serious credibility problems, and the ending is stupid and pointless. Avoid this movie unless you have seen all the other movies about people trapped in a building. Even Anna Nicole Smith's "Skyscraper" is better.