Ive never really cared for Doug Jeffries as a performer, but after seeing LIGHTS & DARK Ive concluded I like him much better as a performer than as a director. Its unbelievable that anyone could take such a hot cast and make such a lukewarm film. Yet hes done just that. The idea is pretty good. Centering the action around a coin laundry where one normally separates the lights from the darks but having white boys and black boys come (or cum) together. The problem was in the execution. The direction lacks imagination and hes badly serviced by his cameraman. Either the cameraman has one leg considerably shorter than the other or else he has an absolute fetish for oblique angles. Such shots only disorient the viewer. A swirling pattern reminiscent of a similar device in Hitchcocks Vertigo changed the setups between and within the scenes themselves. I know this was to simulate the washing cycle and would have been OK to have separated the scenes but it occurs within the scenes whenever the blocking changes. The result is a series of static tableaux.