Exit to Eden is a 1994 American comedy that tries to join romance and thriller, directed by Garry Marshall. Deborah Amelon and Bob Brunner adapted Anne Rice’s novel of the same name. Patrick Doyle wrote the score. About half the picture is a detective comedy Marshall’s team invented for the studio. For kink viewers it is famous as a loud, badly reviewed attempt to shove a mistress-and-slave island romance into multiplex comedy packaging. The characters are adults.
Elliot Slater books a week on Eden
Paul Mercurio plays Elliot Slater, a young Australian professional photographer in Southern California. He is uneasy about sexual desires that lean BDSM, so he books a dominatrix-themed holiday on the private tropical island Eden to sort that out. Before he leaves he happens to photograph Omar, an international jewel thief, in one of the very few clear pictures of Omar’s face. Omar and his partner Nina follow Elliot to the resort, posing as guests so they can get the film back and keep Omar unknown.
Undercover officers Fred Lavery (Dan Aykroyd) and Sheila Kingston (Rosie O’Donnell) arrive, and the plot turns into detective comedy. Sheila poses as a vacationer. Fred poses as a handyman. Scantily dressed guests and staff act out D/s fantasies, and the jokes run through that. A submissive asks how to please Sheila. She tells him to go paint her house. Meanwhile Elliot becomes the personal submissive of Mistress Lisa Emerson (Dana Delany; Lisa Kelly in the book). In a run of scenes she ties him, fondles his naked body, and spanks his bare buttocks, and the two fall in love. The peak is a short trip to New Orleans, where Lisa admits her feelings while Omar tries to kill them. Fred and Sheila stop the thieves, send them to jail, and receive commendations. Elliot returns to Eden and proposes. Lisa accepts. The submissive who was told to paint the house finishes the job.
Whips, nudity, and the last Milkis production
The film was the last produced by Edward K. Milkis before his death in 1996. He was the producer, not the director. The whips shown in close detail were made by Janette Heartwood. Publicity pushed stills of Dana Delany in dominatrix clothes. Full-frontal female nudity, including Delany, and open BDSM themes, plus Marshall’s name, the cast, and Rice’s, guaranteed press attention. The reviews were cold anyway. The pictures still drew eyes.
Reviews, Razzies, and a short ban
Critics generally treated the weld of Rice’s BDSM romance and a buddy-cop farce as a failure. Rotten Tomatoes later listed about 5% rotten, from 19 reviews, averaging about 3.2/10. Roger Ebert gave it half a star and called it a distracted BDSM sex comedy that slid from a slow start into boredom and then into something endless and ridiculous. He called the construction loose and the casting “tragically miscast,” and he thought the actors looked physically miserable. He joked that after Rice had taken ads for Interview with the Vampire, she would not stand behind this one. Time Out treated it as a sexploiter and set it against Zalman King’s “women’s fantasy” movies. James Berardinelli said it had late-night cable ingredients, invited an unfavorable comparison with John Duigan’s Sirens, and questioned the R rating: non-mainstream films had been given NC-17 for less. Janet Maslin in The New York Times called it “an incredible mess… edited in a blender.”
The money followed the pans. About $3 million on the opening weekend and about $6.8 million in total, a loss for the company that released it. Saskatchewan’s film board banned it at first, apparently the only jurisdiction to do so, then lifted the ban after a short burst of press. On the year-end lists Rosie O’Donnell won the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress, Dan Aykroyd was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor, and the two were nominated together as Worst Screen Couple. The 1994 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards also nominated O’Donnell for Worst Actress.
Tape, disc, and the leather stills
Home video followed on a delay. An NTSC VHS arrived in May 1995. An NTSC Region 1 DVD, 4:3 full frame, came out in April 2002. In 2003 a German PAL Region 2 edition was issued as Undercover Cop, with German and English audio.
For BDSM culture the film is still a mainstream warning: someone really did try to sell a mistress-and-slave resort fantasy to multiplex audiences, and a detective subplot that would not let the kink romance stand on its own pulled the floor out. It still circulates as a curiosity, for 1990s mainstream dominatrix costuming, for spanking and bondage played in the open, and for a cast flinching at material the studio only half wanted. Janet Maslin ranked it number 2 on The New York Times year-end worst list. Robert Denerstein, John Hurley, and Glenn Lovell were among the others who panned it. Those roundups fixed the flop reputation. Delany’s leather publicity stills kept the BDSM images in circulation anyway.
