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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The jury may still be out on Alan Madison's filmmaking abilities, but the writer-director demonstrates one undeniable talent in his extremely low-budget debut feature -- the knack for attracting some of the best actors on the indie scene for a film that probably paid them next-to-nothing.

The star of this effort about an increasingly disturbed psychologist is Tony Goldwyn (who is also going nuts in Paramount's "Kiss the Girls"), and the supporting cast includes -- count 'em -- Giancarlo Esposito, Joe Morton, Debi Mazar, Anna Thomson and Edie Falco, as well as New York theater stalwarts Charles Busch, Tammy Grimes and Roger Rees, among others. The film was recently on display at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival.

Unfortunately, this stellar group is more likely than not to regret its generosity, since "Trouble on the Corner" fails to live up to its admirable goal of being a New York-based, paranoid, black-comic thriller. The filmmaker displays a definite imagination and flashes of wit, but this first effort simply doesn't have the style it needs to get its ambitious goals across.

Goldwyn plays Jeff, a therapist who works in his run-down apartment building. Many of his patients, whom he charges a quite-reasonable $35 an hour, are his friends and neighbors, and his specialty is sexual problems. His patients include a compulsive child molester (Bruce MacVittie), the neighborhood butcher's sexually frustrated wife (Thomson) and a gorgeous hand model (Mazar) who keeps her prized assets permanently hidden beneath gloves.

Other assorted, weird characters who Jeff keeps running into include a busybody neighbor (Grimes) who hasn't thrown out a newspaper since her husband died, a drag-queen tarot-card reader (Busch) and a lawyer (Rees) who seems to be perpetually walking his dogs.

Jeff isn't exactly in a happy marriage, since his bath-obsessed wife does little more than grumble and complain when she gets home from a hard day's work as a nurse. She's certainly not interested in sex, but will grudgingly get Jeff off manually if he's feeling particularly frustrated ("Oh, my, what a mess", she comments after his cry of relief). Is it any wonder that, when a hole in his bathroom ceiling offers tantalizing glimpses of his hand-model patient, Jeff begins to develop an erotic fixation on her?

The film intends to chronicle Jeff's gradual descent into madness, which manifests itself by his suddenly raising his fees and advising patients to try murder as a therapeutic technique. The problems are that clumsy filmmaking and Goldwyn's extremely recessive performance fail to clue us in sufficiently, with the result that the character seems to snap suddenly. Not helping matters are the film's lackadaisical pacing, often-awkward dialogue and general lack of structure. These factors could have been overlooked if the individual vignettes or characterizations were more interesting, but they are more bizarre than entertaining.

The performers clearly enjoy their opportunities to play some colorful characters, but their efforts are undermined by the film's overreliance on shtick. When Goldwyn finally does go on his killing spree, he seems less disturbed than just really, really cranky, and the film concludes with an over-the-top, silly denouement in which the patients join forces to get revenge on their shrink.

Tech credits, including photography and sound, reflect the film's meager budget.

TROUBLE ON THE CORNER

Trouble on the Corner Llc.

Director-screenwriter: Alan Madison

Producers: Alan Madison, Diane Kolyer

Executive producers: Henry Eisenberg, Glenn Krevlin, Lee Schalop, Dan Stern

Cinematography: Phil Abraham

Editor: Ray Hubley

Music: Robert Een

Color/mono

Cast:

Jeff Stewart: Tony Goldwyn

Vivian Stewart: Edie Falco

Ericca Ricce: Debi Mazar

Detective Bill: Joe Morton

Mr. McMurtry: Roger Rees

Butcher's Wife: Anna Thomson

Sandy: Bruce MacVittie

Daryl: Giancarlo Esposito

Running time -- 114 minutes

No MPAA rating...