Does the opening scene of Cold Sweat ever portray subtlety! After first checking himself in the mirror for temple baldness, Ben Cross goes into the kitchen and jabs a lethal hunting knife into a jar of peanut butter. This is to tell us in no uncertain terms that Cross lives a double life as a husband and father and as a professional killer.

One of Cross' dispassionate assignments, however, results in a blonde bystander taking a round of slugs in an elevator. This prompts, unfortunately, a roundelay of conscience-raising vignettes in which Cross' victim appears to him in progressive states of undress, no less.

Structurally, this is probably the weakest of links in a film that's a fairly smart and resourceful catchall for a linkup of modernized pulp noir cliches.

Comedian Dave Thomas, playing it totally straight, wins the obnoxious award as a "type-A" real estate developer who's potentially on the teetering end of financial ruin. To keep afloat, Thomas attempts to wheedle money out of wife Shannon Tweed's trust fund, and Shannon just happens to be screwing Thomas' business partner, Henry Czerny, who looks like he just stepped out of a Selsun Blue commercial. His wife's affair is pretty obvious to Dave, who, coincidentally, sets up a hit (Cross) on Czerny through Tweed's other lover, Adam Baldwin, who's also his recreational drug supplier. Throw in Cross —his guilt sessions and resultant sexual impotency—and you've got the makings for enough coincidences, surprises and double crosses (no pun intended) to keep your head spinning for a fast 90 minutes of rigorous adult entertainment.

Tweed is a succulent Lady Macbeth in this Gas House Gang tragedy and gets frequent, but abrupt, opportunities to drop her bath towel.

All things considered, Cold Sweat is a nifty smoking-gun yarn about love quadrangles, jealousy, deceit, infidelity, guilt and mistaken identity that raises it above the norm of your average garden variety erotic thriller.