There's a poker table, a trace of cigarette smoke in the air, and a beckoning bottle of J & B. The boys are having a night out, and the women in their lives are being carved up, verbally, and served on a platter with cold cuts.

Hanging over a straight flush like he's just lost his lunch, Mike Horner gives one of the season's best performances as a man married to a "Mary Poppins" (Megan Leigh). His buddies Peter North and Joey Silvera rag on him for being sexually compromising. But as it plays out via flashbacks, each has his own brand of dirty laundry to air. Seems that North and Silvera are castrated wrecks in their own relationships with Denise Conners and Ariel Knight, respectively. North is a voyeuristic wimp and Silvera puts up with Al Pacino tirades from Knight who shoves her affair with a mercedes mechanic up his nose.

Spinelli's knack for focusing the camera squarely on the sexual frustration of his characters, clues us to their twists, turns and torments by a mere screw of the face. Horner's last chance saloon sex scene with Megan Leigh is polished sexual anger/tension explosion all rolled up into one. Dirty Laundry is a tightly focused, highly charged and very emotional feature. A worthy complement to any video store shelf.