The Endangered List (Case File #149) - FOUND!

HAPPILY EVER AFTER (197?)

CAST

Mary Mendum (The Bride)

Dylan Green (Marvin)

Michael Hennesy (Hal)

Raina Barrett (Natalie)

Steve Hotchner (Ducky)

Jane Ziskind (Mrs. Ducky)

Les Schenkel (Howie)

Written & Directed

by

Ron Wertheim

Produced by

Don Walters & Norm Berns

Director of Photography

Joao Fernandes

Executive Producer

Les Baker

Running time: 79 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Once upon a time, the young man had promised to marry her. You’ve seen her – at the drugstore counter, sipping a Coke; bundled up at the football stadium grandstand; playing with her kitten on the front lawn, you know…the pretty kid with the long, blonde hair. The soft, faultless skin. The big blue eyes. Sweet, innocent and a little shy…you know her.

That’s the one he promised to marry…Once upon a time.

But, one night, very close to graduation, he brought her to his room at the fraternity house. She was a good girl, and so she felt a little tense and worried. She really didn’t mind making love to him, she was even beginning to enjoy it. But why…why was his roommate there…standing in the shadows…standing there watching them? Why did they laugh and wink at each other and why did their other ‘buddy’ just happen to come home early from a date? And why were they all over her…feeling, touching, using her? Once upon a time, he had promised to marry her…But that was a long time ago.

Now, she’s a very grown-up woman. She has not forgotten. In fact, she has thought of nothing else. She is quite, quite mad you see. And…she has a friend, but she really doesn’t like him. Maybe you’ve noticed him, hanging around outside the drugstore…glancing…no, staring at the pretty young girl at the counter. Or sitting in the grey car, watching her play with her kitten through his rearview mirror. You know the guy – balding, very quiet, wears glasses, could be anybody…nobody. He isn’t young anymore. In fact, he is going to die very soon. He has a disease…that is what he tells her, and he loves her. No, he worships her and will do anything for her, even kill…And that is exactly what she wants him to do.

So, off they go, to visit with the two old college ‘buddies,’ and like all reunions they have a wonderful time. Of course, the two guys are grown-up too, and married. Isn’t it fun to play the same games on their wives…to see them stripped and felt and humiliated and…killed. What a great reunion. Now she can laugh too. Now she’s very happily looking forward to…

Once upon a time the young man had promised to marry her. Now, he is ten years older, dissipated, beaten at the games of love by his delightfully cruel wife, and ready…wanting to play the last game. He wants to die.

Imagine, a lovely lady in a wedding gown, her blue eyes sparkle behind a lacy veil. In her delicate hand, a deadly revolver. Imagine, the man who long ago humiliated her, and caused her madness. Now she has returned…returned to kill. Imagine, a faceless man who worships this mad woman and is willing to take revenge for her as his last and only act of love before he dies. Imagine, a stunning, cruel wife, excited by the prospects of the scene. The quartet plays out slowly, violently, with much feeling. The rape of the wife, which is enjoyed with much relish…but by the victims. The transformation of the woman who has come to humiliate and kill but leaves with her old lover, her ‘prince.’ The beating of a dying man who cannot pull the trigger without the order from the woman he worships, a very charming scene.

The sun is setting…the woman’s madness seems to ebb, like the waves of the sea that she now stands before. In a few moments, she will join the man. There, in the honeymoon cottage overlooking the ocean. All is quiet and still as if time had disappeared and the wedding, forgotten so long ago, was about to happen. She doesn’t know that that at that moment they playfully act the lost ceremony and gently lay together in the moonlit cottage that the last game is silently spinning itself out. Imagine, the faceless man, left behind to take the blame for her crimes…brutally humiliating and murdering the sadistic woman he has been left with…as a victim. Imagine, as he speeds through the night towards the lovers. Imagine her face, young and radiant, as it hadn’t been since that moment ten years ago. Imagine as she turns in her lover’s arms to see him standing above them, with the deadly revolver. Seeing the smile of welcome on her lover’s face as the trigger is pulled.

She hears the man say, “I am not dying” …and now she must go away with him. Now she understands that she is trapped, and will never live…Happily Ever After…

The Endangered List (Case File #9)

THE FEMALE RESPONSE (1973)

CAST
Raina Barrett (Leona)
Jacque Lynn Colton (Rosalie)
Michaela Hope (Sandy)
Jennifer Welles (Andrea)
Gena Wheeler (Victoria)
Marjorie Hirsch (Marjorie)
Roz Kelly (Gilda)
Lawrie Driscoll (Karl)
Edmund Donnelly (Mark)
Todd Everett (Gary)
Richard Wilkins (Tom)
Phyllis MacBride (Rachel)
Suzy Mann (Ramona)
Curtis Carlson (Alex)
Herb Streicher a.k.a. Harry Reems (Max)
Anthony Scott Craig (Caller)

Richard Lipton (Leland)

CREDITS
Produced by Richard Lipton
Directed by Tim Kincaid
Director of Photography: Arthur D. Marks
Music Composed by Bill Reynolds
Music Arranged and Conducted by Manny Duran
Screenplay by Tim Kincaid and David Newburge
Film Editing by Graham Place and Arthur Marks, Atlantis Films, Inc.
Sound by Graham Place
Art and Sculpture by Richard Corben, Aaronel De Roy Gruber, and Jamie De Roy
Hairstyles Created by Albert Brown

A Filmpeople Presentation
A Richard Lipton Production
A Trans-American Release
Running Time: 89 minutes
Aspect Ration: 1.85:1
Rating: R

Color by Movielab

SYNOPSIS

A newspaper columnist with firm ideas about feminine freedoms, Marjorie (MARJORIE HIRSCH) is fired by her editor for expressing her libertarian views in her column. Convinced that her employer was no longer in touch with today's morals and acceptance of the sexual revolution, she begins a probe of public attitudes and instigates a seminar in sex among a representative group of young women.

Sandy (MICHAELA HOPE), a free-living young hippie, denounces the restrictions of married life to the girls at the seminar and describes as an example an afternoon spent with Gary (TODD EVERETT), a young man who picked her up as she was hitchhiking to a country bungalow she maintained. She explains how she introduced him to some drug-boosted love-making as the pair spent an interval in the surrounding forest.

Social restrictions have no bonds on Victoria (GENA WHEELER) who forthrightly describes herself as a high-priced call girl. She declares that she sees nothing wrong with an occupation in which she is handsomely paid for making love to the most sophisticated men in New York. However, she does admit that it becomes boring at times and does not eliminate the possibility that she might one day settle down.

Such an existence fascinates Rosalie (JACQUE LYNN COLTON) who admits that she doesn't have the body to be a successful prostitute. In fact, with her weight problem, any affair with a man would be a relief from her virginal state.

The problems of a suburban housewife are expressed by Leona (RAINA BARRETT) who relates the boredom of life with a husband who has allowed his professional ambitions and drive for material gain to interfere with their emotional life, relegating love making to a routine duty.

Gilda (ROZ KELLY) reveals her interest in the offbeat propositions described in the ads of the underground press. She expresses shock at their audacity but it doesn't discourage her from determining to investigate their erotic possibilities. Responding to one of the ads, she finds herself imprisoned in a bed and bound at the wrists by her co-respondent. Another attempt finds her with a young man (RICHARD LIPTON) who insists that she must dress up like his mother and treat him like an infant in order to relate to her sexually.

Resentment of the masculine image forces Andrea (JENNIFER WELLES), a pretty blonde socialite, to tease the men she meets, luring them on then coldly cutting them off at the peak of their interest. Her technique backfires, however, when, spurning the advances of a young garage mechanic, she is raped by him in her shower. But, rather than an ordeal, she finds she enjoys the experience.

Rosalie, too, finally gets into activities more satisfying sexually when she joins a group of swingers who believe in love making as a group activity.

For Leona, the routines of suburbia take a painful turn when, responding to an obscene phone call, she finds that her frustration forces her to listen to the caller…and sense erotic enjoyment from it.

Victoria's life as a call girl appears to end when she receives a marriage proposal from one of her clients. They agree to a rendezvous and, although she is sure that he wasn't sincere, he appears and they go off together.

The girls end their seminar in agreement that the social revolution is a welcome change and that each had learned much from her sisters to guide her in improving her own love life.