Deadly Illusion

Deadly Illusion

Deadly Illusion

Share

Deadly Illusion

"If the killer isn't really a killer... And the victim isn't really a victim... Why do people keep turning up dead?"

1987

1h 30m

5.5(9 votes)

Drama

Crime

Mystery

Thriller

Overview

A private eye hired to kill a man's wife warns her instead and then finds both are impostors.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Billy Dee Williams

Billy Dee Williams

Hamberger

Vanity

Vanity

Rina

Morgan Fairchild

Morgan Fairchild

Jane Mallory / Sharon Burton

John Beck

John Beck

Alex Burton

Joe Cortese

Joe Cortese

Detective Paul Lefferts

Michael Wilding, Jr.

Costillion

Dennis Hallahan

Burton Imposter

Jenny Cornuelle

Gloria Reid

Allison Woodward

Nancy Costillion

Joe Spinell

Joe Spinell

Crazy Man in Gun Bureau

Creative team

Directed by: Larry Cohen
William Tannen
Written by: Larry Cohen
Produced by: Irwin Meyer

Similar Movies

Love Child

A woman is stuck in a loveless marriage to a brutish husband, but when a handsome vagabond stranger appears, her precocious 11-year-old hatches a plan to get rid of his father so that his mother can marry this new man instead. But things end up backfiring, so he comes up with yet another plan, this one even more devious, with more disastrous and unexpected consequences.

The Prisoner

The Prisoner

While traveling in Europe Philip Quentin encounters his former sweetheart, Dorothy Garrison, and finds that she is now engaged to Prince Ugo Ravorelli, whom Philip recognizes as the man wanted for a murder in Brazil.

Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry

A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.

True Romance

True Romance

Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.

Saw

Saw

Two men wake up to find themselves shackled in a grimy, abandoned bathroom. As they struggle to comprehend their predicament, they discover a disturbing tape left behind by the sadistic mastermind known as Jigsaw. With a chilling voice and cryptic instructions, Jigsaw informs them that they must partake in a gruesome game in order to secure their freedom.

A Crime

A Crime

Vincent's life is on hold until he finds his wife's killer. Alice, his neighbor, is convinced she can make him happy. She decides to invent a culprit, so that Vincent can find revenge and leave the past behind. But there is no ideal culprit and no perfect crime.

Mala Noche

Mala Noche

Walt is a lonely convenience store clerk who has fallen in love with a Mexican migrant worker named Johnny. Though Walt has little in common with the object of his affections — including a shared language — his desire to possess Johnny prompts a sexual awakening that results in a tangled love triangle.

12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead

Five different criminals face imminent death after botching a job quite badly.

The Interpreter

The Interpreter

After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.

Minority Report

Minority Report

John Anderton is a top 'Precrime' cop in the late-21st century, when technology can predict crimes before they're committed. But Anderton becomes the quarry when another investigator targets him for a murder charge.

The Good German

The Good German

An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.

Freaks

Freaks

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

Lucky Number Slevin

Lucky Number Slevin

Slevin is mistakenly put in the middle of a personal war between the city’s biggest criminal bosses. Under constant watch, Slevin must try not to get killed by an infamous assassin and come up with an idea of how to get out of his current dilemma.

Bad Education

Bad Education

When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Some of Sin City's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

Rio Bravo

Rio Bravo

A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.

Swimming Pool

Swimming Pool

A British crime novelist travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek solitude in order to work on her next book. However, the unexpected arrival of the publisher's daughter induces complications and a subsequent crime.

The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs

Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.

Recommended Movies

Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely

Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, a former lounge dancer. While also investigating the murder of a client and the theft of a jade necklace, Marlowe becomes entangled with seductress Helen Grayle and discovers a web of dark secrets that are better left hidden.

Marlowe

Marlowe

Mysterious Orfamay Quest hires Los Angeles private investigator Philip Marlowe to find her missing brother. Though the job seems simple enough, it leads Marlowe into the underbelly of the city, turning up leads who are murdered with ice picks, exotic dancers, blackmailed television stars, and self-preserving gangsters. Soon, Marlowe's life is on the line right along with his case.

Reptile

Reptile

Following the brutal murder of a young real estate agent, a hardened detective attempts to uncover the truth in a case where nothing is as it seems, and by doing so dismantles the illusions in his own life.

A Walk Among the Tombstones

A Walk Among the Tombstones

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness

As a seasoned homicide detective, Thomas Craven has seen the bleakest side of humanity. But nothing prepares him for the toughest investigation of his life: the search for his only daughter Emma's killer. Now, he is on a personal mission to uncover the disturbing secrets surrounding her murder, including corporate corruption, government collusion and Emma's own mysterious life.

Striking Distance

Striking Distance

Coming from a police family, Tom Hardy ends up fighting his uncle after the murder of his father. Tom believes the killer is another cop, and goes on the record with his allegations. Demoted to water-way duty Tom, along with new partner Jo Christman, navigate the three rivers looking for clues and discovering bodies. This time the victims are women Tom knows, he must find the killer to prove his innocence.

China Moon

China Moon

Detective Kyle Bodine falls for Rachel Munro who is trapped in a violent marriage. After she shoots her husband, Kyle relucantly agrees to help hide the body, but his partner is showing an unusual flair for finding clues.

Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland

When Hollywood superstar George Reeves dies in his home, private detective Louis Simo is hired to investigate his death and gets caught in a web of lies involving a big studio executive's wife. Based on a true story.

I Am All Girls

I Am All Girls

A special crimes investigator forms an unlikely bond with a serial killer to bring down a global child sex trafficking syndicate.

Gone Girl

Gone Girl

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Master Gardener

Master Gardener

Narvel Roth is a meticulous horticulturist who is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager Mrs. Haverhill. When she demands that he take on her wayward and troubled niece, it unlocks dark secrets from a buried violent past.

American Gigolo

American Gigolo

Julian makes a lucrative living as an escort to older women in the Los Angeles area. He begins a relationship with Michelle, a local politician's wife, without expecting any pay. One of his clients is murdered and Detective Sunday begins pumping him for details on his different clients, something he is reluctant to do considering the nature of his work. Julian begins to suspect he's being framed. Meanwhile Michelle begins to fall in love with him.

The Locksmith

The Locksmith

A thief fresh out of prison, tries to work his way back into the life of his daughter and ex-fiancé. Determined, he is forced to use the skills he has as a gifted locksmith. Things take a tumultuous turn after an unexpected disappearance.

Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill

Two veteran New York City detectives work to identify the possible connection between a recent murder and a case they believe they solved years ago; is there a serial killer on the loose, and did they perhaps put the wrong person behind bars?

In the Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist

Lt. Dave Robicheaux, a detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie 'Baby Feet' Balboni, who is co-producer of a Civil War film. When the star of the film, Elrod Sykes, reports finding another corpse in the Atchafalaya Swamp near the movie set, Robicheaux starts another investigation, believing the corpse to be the remains of a black man whose murder he witnessed 35 years earlier.

Suburbicon

Suburbicon

In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.

They Call Me Mister Tibbs!

They Call Me Mister Tibbs!

A police detective's investigation of a prostitute's murder points to his best friend.

Gang Related

Gang Related

After murdering an undercover DEA agent, two corrupt cops scramble to cover up what they've done.

Desert Dawn

Desert Dawn

A newly appointed small-town sheriff and his begrudging deputy get tangled up in a web of lies and corruption involving shady businessmen and the cartel while investigating the murder of a mysterious woman.

Careful What You Wish For

Careful What You Wish For

A guy gets more than he bargained for after entering into an affair with the wife of an investment banker. Soon, a suspicious death and substantial life insurance policy embroil him in a scandal.