Pacific Heights(1990)
20th Century Fox Sep 28, 1990 | Wide
Drake and Patty purchase a San Francisco Victorian hoping to fund their future through rental income. Their stability collapses when Carter Hayes occupies the studio, weaponizing tenant law to drain their finances and sanity.
Releases
Original Release | Sep 28, 1990
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Box Office Results
Updated as of May 31, 2026 11:15 AM ET
Results
$6,912,637
$29,381,956
$15,544,750
$44,926,706
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Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Stereo
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English,Japanese
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton) makes love to a woman (Beverly D'Angelo) in a nice house as 2 men enter and attack him with a bat. He talks about leaving.Drake (Matthew Modine) and girlfriend Patty (Melanie Griffith) are house hunting in San Francisco. They purchase a house with rooms that can be rented, and set about remodeling. Several people look at the units, and Toshio (Mako) and Mira (Nobu McCarthy) Watanabe rent one. Another potential renter, Lou Baker (Carl Lumbly), wants to rent the other, but his application is lost during move-in. Carter arrives and pays for 2 month's rent, but refuses to fill out a credit application. Drake calls Carter's references and speaks to Carter's lover Ann, who asks for the house address.Carter seems shifty, but covers smoothly when questioned. His down payment never arrives, but he's already moved in. Construction work seems to be going on in his unit, and Carter has changed the locks. He also seems to be fixated with phone books. Drake tries to sue for eviction; Drake and Patty are short on money, and tempers flare. Drake witnesses a fight between Carter and his roommate, and realizes Carter has been breeding cockroaches to drive off the other tenants. The courts rule against Drake, and Carter continues to annoy him. Patty has a miscarriage.Carter comes by the next morning, and Drake attacks him. The police, tipped off by Carter prior, arrest Drake. Carter files for a restraining order and begins stalking Patty. Drake tries to see Patty and Carter shoots him and places a tire iron in his hand, framing him for assault. The courts finally evict Carter, but he has stripped the place bare. Patty files a police report with, of all people, Detective Baker, the original rent applicant.Patty discovers Carter's name is James Danforth, and that he is legally severed from his family trust. Patty begins tracking Carter's previous scams, questioning Ann and learning where Carter is. She tails him, watching him scam other people. She sneaks into his hotel room and charges up a huge room service bill. She also tells Drake to cancel his credit cards, as Carter has been using them. Carter is arrested.Patty and Drake start to rebuild their house. Carter sneaks in and attacks Drake. He comes after Patty, and she and Drake fight him, killing him.Months later, Drake and Patty are selling this house - for a profit.====================================================================At an upscale Palm Springs resort, a man, Carter Hayes and his lover, Ann, are enjoying an evening of sex. Suddenly, the door bursts open and two men with baseball bats enter and beat him severely. Ann is mildly injured herself. She holds Carter, who talks about leaving.In San Francisco Drake Goodman and his girlfriend Patty Palmer are house hunting in the city's upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. They find a large, Victorian fixer-upper comprised of three apartments. Patty and Drake look upon the house as an investment and know they can make their mortgage payments by renting out two of the apartments: one is a small studio, the other is a one-bedroom. Patty and Drake fix them up to look more modern, handling almost all the work themselves.Among the first applicants are a pleasant Japanese couple, Toshio and Mira Watanabe, who agree to rent the one-bedroom. Another applicant, Lou Baker, talks about how he and his wife are divorcing and he needs a place to live. He's reluctant to fill out a credit application but Patty insists and Baker finally agrees, saying that he's been nervous because of the trouble with his wife. He returns the application, slipping it under the front door, however it becomes lost when the Watanabe's move in. While screening applicants for the studio, Drake meets Carter Hayes. Hayes is also reluctant to fill out an application for credit & references and also flashes a large amount of money in front of Drake, promising he'll pay for the security deposit and six months rent in advance. However, he also says that he's unexpectedly short. Drake agrees, believing that Hayes will wire the money to his bank account but is also firm about Hayes filling out the application. The woman that Hayes was in bed with when he was beaten acts as a reference for Hayes and tells Drake that he was a model tenant when he rented from her.Patty finds Hayes in the apartment one day, asking who he is and seeing that Hayes has brought dozens of out-of-town phone books with him and has stacked them around. Hayes explains that he'd talked to Drake, who'd said weeks prior that he could move in. Patty wonders why Drake wouldn't tell her; Drake tells her that Hayes should not be occupying the apartment because they haven't received his security deposit. Drake becomes increasingly frustrated and angry when the bank tells him the money hasn't arrived. When he tries to talk to Hayes, a strange man, Greg, answers the door and tells Drake that Hayes is out of town. When Drake tells the Greg to have Hayes contact him, Greg curtly slams the door.One night Toshio complains to Drake that there is loud pounding and other noise coming from Hayes' apartment. When Drake tries to enter the apartment to investigate, he finds that Hayes has changed the locks. The noise continues. In a fury, Drake illegally turns off the electricity and heat to the unit. Hayes calls the police who, though they understand Drake's plight, order him to turn on the utilities. They also inform Drake that tenant's laws protect Hayes as much as his landlord. Patty and Drake are then forced to hire an exterminator when roaches appear under Toshio and Mira's sink. The expense will be high and the couple are already in debt, creating further tension between them.To evict Hayes, Drake and Patty retain a lawyer, Stephanie MacDonald, who tells them that cases like this are common: a con-artist who knows the laws and the system will act the same way that Hayes has & even try to drive out the owners off the property. The case will take several months and the possibility of getting any money from Hayes is near zero, however, Drake and Patty simply want Hayes gone. Patty also tells Drake that she's pregnant.Another night Hayes makes even more noise in his apartment and Drake enters the crawlspace under the studio and, through an air duct, witnesses an argument between Greg and Hayes, which escalates into a physical fight. A jar falls on the air duct and shatters, spilling large roaches onto Drake's face. Later, in their apartment, Drake surmises correctly that Hayes is somehow breeding roaches in his apartment in an attempt to drive out the Watanabes. Drake also discovers that Hayes has kidnapped the stray cat Drake and Patty took in when they moved into the house.Drake wakes up from a nightmare one night to find Patty weak and crying in the bathroom. She has miscarried the pregnancy and ends up hospitalized for a few days. When she returns, Hayes shows up at their door, offering flowers in sympathy for Patty and to make peace between him and Drake. Drake is infuriated and tackles Hayes. The two fall down the stairs and Drake beats Hayes severely, the altercation spilling out into the street. Just then, the police arrive an arrest Drake -- Hayes had phoned the police and reported a physical altercation in the house prior to talking to Patty and Drake. Drake is charged with assault and Hayes obtains a restraining order that keeps Drake from coming within 500 yards of the house.Drake stays with a friend. Patty, spooked when Hayes places a harassing phone call to her, calls Drake at their friend's house. Drake goes to his house immediately and enters in violation of the restraining order. Hayes finds him in the main hallway of the house and shoots him in the arm and shoulder with a pistol. He places a crowbar in Drake's hand, again framing him for assault.With Drake in the hospital, Stephanie is able to procure a court order to finally evict Hayes. Patty oversees the procedure. A city sheriff has the door opened and Patty finds that the apartment has been completely stripped. Hayes and his partner had everything removed and probably sold. At the police station Patty meets with Baker, the man that had applied first for the studio apartment, who turns out to be an SFPD detective. He says he'll do what he can to retrieve the stolen property but cases like this are hard to solve. He suggests that Patty let it go and consider herself and Drake lucky that Hayes didn't seize the house from them.Among the ruins in the studio, Patty finds a photograph that has a name on it: James Danforth. Patty begins to investigate the name and finds that Hayes had once been a member of an affluent family and the recipient of a private trust, however his family now pays him to stay away from them. Patty tracks Hayes to Palm Springs and finds Ann, who tells Patty she loves Drake but tolerates his games and even partners with him to con others -- the house she currently lives, the one they were both beaten in, was awarded to her and Hayes when the landlord tried to evict them by force. She shows Patty a postcard she'd gotten from Hayes with a picture of a Los Angeles hotel on it.Patty goes to LA looking for Hayes at the hotel. She follows him and finds out he's spending a large amount of his time with a rich widow. Patty is able to fool one of the housekeeping staff into letting her into Hayes' room at the hotel and discovers that he has been staying there under the name of "Drake Goodman." He has even had identification cards forged with Drake's name and has set up credit accounts and an identical bank account in Drake's name. Patty craftily begins to turn the tide against Hayes by posing as Carter's wife and then charging an huge amount of hotel services to Hayes' room, reporting the fake credit cards and Hayes' traveler's checks as stolen, reporting his stolen Porsche to the police and stealing a large amount of petty cash for herself. She has Drake call the customer service number for the duplicate bank account and cancel it. When Hayes returns to the hotel, the hotel manager tells him that there are problems with his credit. The manager also tells Hayes that his "wife" is responsible for the charges to his room. The manager allows Hayes to go to his room to find answers; he and Patty pass in the hallway and Patty narrowly escapes. Hayes is arrested but doesn't stay in jail for long; he convinces the widow he's been sweet-talking to post bail for him.At home, Drake rests upstairs from his hospital stay and Patty performs a few touch-ups on the studio. She uses a pneumatic nail gun to put temporary pieces of plywood over the holes Hayes left in the floor. Hayes sneaks into the upstairs apartment and beats Drake with a golf club. Hayes tricks Patty into re-entering the apartment by imitating their cat, locks the door and threatens her with the nail gun. Drake, unable to enter because of the latched door, tries to enter through the hole in the floor. Patty is able to temporarily force Hayes off her and Drake grabs his leg from below the hole, causing Hayes to pitch backwards and fall on the sharpened ends of the piping to the sink he stole. Hayes twitches and dies.Several months later, Patty and Drake sell the house to another yuppie couple. When asked why they want to walk away from such a beautiful home, Patty says "it was just an investment."
Storyline
- Drake enters the property market fueled by a desperate need for status. He stakes his relationship on a mortgage that demands perfection. The arrival of Carter Hayes acts as the catalyst for a slow motion psychological demolition. Hayes refuses to pay, instead filling the walls with roaches and industrial noise. Drake responds with his defining vice: a volatile, short sighted temper. He cuts the power and enters the unit, handed a legal defeat that strips him of his rights. The moral pivot arrives as Drake abandons the law to hunt his tormentor. He pays the cost in blood and legal ruin while his partnership with Patty fractures under the weight of his incompetence. — Quill & Camera In San Francisco, Patty Palmer and her boyfriend Drake Goodman decide to move in together. They use all their saving for the down-payment of a Victorian house, with two separate apartments on the first floor that they need to rent to pay the mortgage. They rent the first apartment to Mr. Toshio Watanabe and his wife. Soon a man called Carter Hayes arrives driving a fancy car and convinces Drake to neglect in their requirements to the tenants. But soon he will learn that he made a bad deal. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil A yuppie couple buy a large house in an exclusive San Fransisco neighborhood. They renovate it and plan to rent two apartments on the first floor to cover the costs. A prosperous looking man moves in but is not the ideal tenant. He never pays any rent, drives the other tenants away and systematically ruins the lives of his landlords. — Jim Sadur <jsadur@keyflux.com>
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