The Frighteners
directed by Peter Jackson
starring Michael J Fox, Trini Alvarado, Jake Busey, Melanie Lynskey (watch out! it's a cameo!)...

Now I know Mel doesn't make too much of an appearance in this one (two cameo scenes as a deputy - do not rent the video for these moments only! We've got about two seconds of Melanie-Lynskey-onscreen here!), but there are several references to HC and Melanie Lynskey (besides her cameo) in The Frighteners. Like the trainspotter that I am, here's what I noticed:

* First, Melanie's 'scenes' (if you don't feel like watching the whole movie): at approximately 37 minutes and 52 minutes. Look out for a young deputy (if it's short, if it's only a glimpse, then that's Mel)

* Trini Alvarado's character is called Lucy Lynskey. How hard...and yet how pleasing. Plus be sure to have a look at Trini Alvarado's amazing resemblance to Melanie Lynskey.

* Lucy Lynskey (her again! Oh she's the female lead) is watching a tape on Famous Psychopaths or something, and guess who you can see on the box ? Well if it isn't that shot of Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet as Pauline and Juliet that wasn't used in Heavenly Creatures... (call it recycling...) And here's the shot.

* There's a whole thing about a psychopath (played by Jake Busey, again a psychopath in Contact) who killed about a dozen people in the 1950s - this seems to be the era of all evil in Peter Jackson's filmography. He had a girlfriend at that time, who was madly in love with him and spent some time in jail because she was thought to have been an accomplice in the murders (now this does sound familiar...). And just as Lucy Lynskey's husband (who's -unwillingly - watching the tape too) says they should have fried the girl with her psycho sweetheart, Lucy Lynskey fights back with something like: 'She was only fifteen! She was in love... It could have happened to anyone...' As she says this last sentence she looks back at the video box with the Kate&Mel picture on it and she actually sounds like she's sorry for the girls. Even though Trini Alvarado may never have heard of Heavenly Creatures.
And the actress who played the psychopath's girlfriend turned out to be Mel's co-star in Adam Larkin's Measureless to Man. Her name is Nicola Cliff and I was told this by Melanie herself (yes, this is the famous letter you've all heard about) :-))))