That Eric Brown, what a lucky dude. First in Private Lessons with Sylvia Kristel and then in They're Playing With Fire with Sybil Danning the boy is doing well with the cougars.

However other than those titillating sex scenes there's not much to recommend either film. Danning seduces Brown but that's at the behest of her husband Andrew Prine. They're both tired of sitting around and waiting for his mother and grandmother to die. They want Brown to break in and just scare the two women so they might sell the old mansion and give them some of the loot.

But then some hooded individual comes along and murders the two women and hides the bodies. A few more deaths follow before we learn the truth.

If it weren't for Sybil Danning's body and those two weapons of mass destruction she has interest would be minimal here. If that's your thing go for it.

Cunning and enticing college English professor Diane Stevens (the ever luscious Sybil Danning at her all-time hottest) seduces gawky, naive student Jay Richard (the hopelessly geeky Eric Brown of "Private Lessons" fame) so she can use him as a patsy for an intricate scheme to inherit a sizable sum of money from her wealthy in-laws. However, a vicious mystery killer gums things up to an alarming degree. Director/co-writer Howard Avedis concocts a really strange and sordid blend of your standard silly teen sexploitation romp (the sleazy soft-core sex scenes are genuinely steamy stuff) and more mean-spirited slasher horror schlock (the scene where the psycho dressed as Santa beats a luckless lady's head in with a baseball bat is truly jolting). The cool supporting cast includes Andrew Prine as Diane's jerky husband Michael, Paul ("The Beast Within") Clemens as Jay's amiable college roommate Martin "Bird" Johnson, Alvy ("Green Acres") Moore as cranky gas station owner Jimbo, and K.T. Stevens as Michael's bitchy mother Linda. Moreover, this picture deserves extra kudos for getting right to the point: a mere eight minutes into the film Sybil removes her top and bares her beautiful bountiful breasts. Gary Graver's crisp, handsome cinematography, several tacky rock songs blaring away on the soundtrack, John Cacavas' thrashin' rock score, a few ugly murder set pieces, and Danning's awesomely abundant eye-popping nudity further enhance the delectably cheesy charm of this vintage 80's exploitation junk.

If I'd had a teacher at college who looked like Sybil Danning, I wouldn't have got much work done. Come to think of it, my teacher was a middle-aged man with a beard, and I still didn't get much work done. Aah, those lazy, hazy college days....

Eric Brown plays Jay Richard, the English student who gets to boff his beautiful, busty professor Diana in exchange for doing a few jobs: varnishing her yacht (not a euphemism) and sneaking into the home of her husband's mother and grandmother to scare the old women enough so that Diane and hubbie Michael (Andrew Prine) can be made executors of the estate. As is par for the course in this kind of trash, things don't go according to plan, with a masked murderer on the loose causing all sorts of problems for poor Jay.

The incredible Ms. Danning is the main reason to watch this otherwise lacklustre thriller, the hard-bodied hottie regularly stripping off to give us a good look at her amazing attributes. Without her to steam up the screen, the film would be largely forgettable, with a dumb plot that will have you screaming at Jay throughout, "Go to the police, NOW!" (but bang Diane one last time before you do).

What starts as a saucy slice of teenage wish-fulfilment slowly turns into a sub-standard '80s slasher, with the bodies piling up, and Jay teaming up with Diane to solve the mystery. The killer is fairly unimposing - far removed from unstoppable giants such as Jason and Michael Myers - and has a tendency to speak like Elmo from Sesame Street, which makes him even less scary.

Unmissable stuff for fans of its voluptuous, frequently naked female star, but as a thriller/horror, it's merely passable.