The Fifth Element (1997, Fr.) (aka Le Cinquième Élément)

Leeloo Was the Actual "Fifth Element" Who Was Essential for the Survival of Humanity - To Protect It From the Destructive Arrival of the Great Evil

Writer/director Luc Besson's science-fiction techno-thriller epic, set in a futuristic 23rd century NYC (2263 AD), was noted for its exceptional sets, visual effects and costume designs, and its basic plot-line of good vs. evil. Its tagline was:

It Mu5t Be Found.

The film opened in an Egyptian temple in 1914, where an Italian hieroglyphics expert Professor Pacoli (John Bluthal) was deciphering a drawing:

You see here these different peoples, or symbols of people, gathering together the four elements of life: Water, fire, earth, air, around a fifth one. A fifth element...It's like a battle plan. Here, the Good. Here, the Evil. And here, a weapon against Evil...This man, this perfect being. I know this is the key. I know it. This divine light they talk about.

The film posited the idea that a Great Evil (a huge ball of molten lava and fire) arrived approximately every 5,000 years, threatening to destroy all of humanity. The only weapon to defeat the Great Evil consisted of:

• Four mystical stones representing the classical elements (Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water)
• A "Fifth Element" in the form of an other-worldly humanoid, positioned in the center of the elements ("The Supreme Being, the ultimate warrior. Created to protect life")

The "Fifth Element" had the ability to combine the power of the other four elements into a "Divine Light" that could stop the Great Evil ("Together, they produce the "Light of Creation" that can bring life to the farthest reaches of the Universe").

Aliens Enter Into an Egyptian Temple Chamber
Sarcophagus of "The Fifth Element"	Stones Representing the Four Classic Elements

At the moment of great discovery by the Professor, a Mondoshawan spaceship landed with giant alien creatures who announced: "War is coming. Stones not safe on Earth anymore." They opened a chamber holding an upright sarcophagus with the "Fifth Element." They gathered up the four stones (of the four elements) and put them in a case, and took the sarcophagus. Their goal was to defend themselves against the Great Evil that would come upon them in 300 years.

300 Years Later (in the year 2263 AD), a giant ball of black fire was threatening to destroy Earth, fulfilling the prediction. As the Mondoshawan spacecraft was bringing the Fifth Element back to Earth to protect it, it was destroyed by warships from the evil Mangalores, a race of aliens directed by evil industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman), who was working on behalf of the Great Evil.

The only surviving portion of the "Fifth Element " from the destroyed Mondoshawan spacecraft was a severed hand - it was used in a memorable regeneration or body reconstruction scene in a NY nucleolab by a team of scientists, to resurrect a Perfect Being - a beautiful nude woman with orange hair - an extra-terrestrial female named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich).

Leeloo was teamed up with cab-driver and former soldier Major Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) after literally diving off a multi-story Manhattan building into his vehicle. She was the humanoid embodiment of love, a Perfect Being who was the only one who could stop the impending arrival of the Great Evil from ultimately destroying Earth. In a race against time, Dallas and Leeloo joined forces to combat the evil, apocalyptic forces of Zorg and his mercenaries, whose enlisted goal was to trigger the disaster.

Leeloo's and Dallas' main mission was to recover the four stone elements, and together with Leeloo ("the Fifth Element") defeat the Great Evil before it struck Earth. The film's final scene was inside the Egyptian temple where the stones had been activated, but Leeloo was unsure that Earth was worth saving.

Dallas confessed his love for Leeloo and kissed her (showing her their love was worth saving), to convince her to release the power of the stones and cause the Divine Light to destroy the approaching molten mass of Great Evil in the Earth's atmosphere (only 62 miles from impact) ("Scanner imaging has confirmed the dark planet dead. The planet seems to have stopped at 62 miles from impact").

Dallas and Leeloo

Activation or Release of the Power of the Four Stones (Elements)

Destruction of Molten Mass of Great Evil

When the Federation President Lindberg (Tom Lister, Jr.) arrived to congratulate Dallas and Leeloo for saving Earth, he had to wait for them to finish making love in a healing tank.

Fight Club (1999)

Tyler Durden Wasn't Real; Tyler and the "Narrator" Were the Same Person; Tyler Was Part of the "Narrator's" Dissociative Split Personality, Who Took Over When the "Narrator" Slept; To Rid Himself of the Mental Projections of Tyler, The "Narrator" Shot Himself in the Cheek

Director David Fincher's enigmatic, film noirish psychological thriller was an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel. The daring, feverish and dark non-linear satire on manhood in crisis found a large (and sometimes controversy-invoking) audience. It told about the destructive effects of consumerism, male insecurities and the glorification of self-destructive violence by a men's fight club. It had the tagline:

Mischief, Mayhem, Soap.

The opening voice-over conversation occurred during a confounding scene in which the film's two main characters were confronting each other. The "Narrator"/"Jack" (Edward Norton) was being held at gunpoint (the gun was in his mouth!) by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), during a count-down to "ground zero" -- the demolition of twelve corporate buildings (with credit card company records) by a movement known as "Project Mayhem," to theoretically elminate debt and start fresh. Tyler Durden threatened the destruction unless the "Narrator" shot himself:

Narrator: People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.
Tyler: Three minutes. This is it. Ground zero. Want to say a few words to mark the occasion?
Narrator: With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels. 'I can't think of anything.' For a second, I totally forget about Tyler's whole controlled demolition thing and I wonder how clean that gun is.
Tyler: It's getting exciting now.
Narrator: That old saying, how you always hurt the one you love. Well, it works both ways. We have front-row seats for this theater of mass destruction. The Demolitions Committee of Project Mayhem wrapped the foundation columns of a dozen buildings with blasting gelatin. ln two minutes, primary charges will blow base charges and a few square blocks will be reduced to smouldering rubble. l know this because Tyler knows this.
Tyler: Two and a half. Think of everything we've accomplished.
Narrator: And suddenly, I realize that all of this - the gun, the bombs, the revolution, has got something to do with a girl named Marla Singer...

After the gun was removed from his mouth, the twisting drama was then told in flashback, as the Narrator spoke about his background and how he had first met Tyler Durden. Through subsequent scenes, a review was presented of the Narrator's own unsatisfying and alienated life as a 29 year-old yuppie corporate worker who was increasingly bored, disillusioned, discontented and dissatisfied with his emasculated life and white-collar job as a product recall specialist for an automobile company.

His life was soon turned upside down. On an airplane flight, the Narrator met a soap salesman and part-time waiter and projectionist named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), with a devil-may-care attitude, who gave him his business card - he was a salesman for the Paper Street Soap Co. Unbeknownst to the Narrator, "Tyler" was the Narrator's formation of an alternate identity - and a mental projection of the unnamed Narrator. The entirety of their conversations was within the Narrator's mind. Until the very end, the Narrator was unaware that Tyler was his split personality, who was sabotaging his conventional life.

By the film's ending, it was clearly revealed that Tyler Durden was actually one side of the split personality-psyche of the "Narrator's" own imagination. This was a classic plot twist device - of an "unreliable narrator." During a conversation with himself (and with Tyler), "Jack"/the Narrator realized that he was one and the same with Durden:

"Why do people think that I'm you? Answer me!...Answer me. Why do people think that I'm you?......Because we're the same person! We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap."

'Tyler' explained the split personality phenomenon:

"You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I f--k like you wanna f--k. I am smart, capable and, most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not...People do it every day. They talk to themselves. They see themselves as they'd like to be. They don't have the courage you have to just run with it. Naturally, you're still wrestling with it, so sometimes you're still you...Other times, you imagine yourself watching me...Little by little, you're just letting yourself become Tyler Durden."

During the explosive finale as terrorist violence escalated through destructive, organized activities known as "Project Mayhem," Tyler threatened to blow up a dozen buildings of various major credit card companies and couldn't be subdued by the "Narrator." The only way he could destroy, stop or kill "Durden" (and prevent the mayhem) was by destroying him and his voice in his head - by suicidally shooting himself. Realizing that the gun was in his hand and that he was holding the trigger, the "Narrator" fired the gun through his own left cheek - although Tyler believed the bullet was shot into his brain. The gunshot effectively ended the mental projections of Tyler Durden

[Note: There was a clever switcheroo in how the Narrator was able to trick Tyler's perceptions about the gun shot. Tyler thought he was rendered dead by a shot through the brain. In reality, the Narrator had shot himself through his cheek. The head shot completely vanquished the "Tyler Durden" side of the personality.]

"Narrator" Shooting Himself in Conclusion to "Kill" His Alternate Identity

The Narrator barely survived his own 'enlightenment,' but was unable to stop Project Mayhem - and afterwards, he witnessed the destruction of various skyscrapers with girlfriend Marla Singer at his side as he assured her and told her:

"Everything's gonna be fine. You met me at a very strange time in my life."

Final Destination 5 (2011)

This Fifth Film in the Series Was Actually a Prequel to the First Film, Final Destination (2000)

Director Steven Quale's fifth installment of the long-running horror film series since the year 2000, had the taglines:

Death has never been closer.
AND
We all share a common destination.

It resumed the premise of all the films in the franchise -- that if one evaded a violent public death through a premonition, the Grim Reaper would eventually kill the survivors of the major disaster, or in the words of the ever-present coroner William Bludworth (Tony Todd):

"Death doesn't like to be cheated."

It opened with a group of Presage Paper Company factory co-workers and associates on a bus traveling to a "team-building" corporate retreat, and about to cross the North Bay Bridge. One office worker named Sam Lawton (Nicholas D'Agosto) had a premonition that the poorly-constructed suspension bridge was about to collapse, and his friends and associates, including himself (and the bus driver), were about to be mangled or drowned in his dream:

1. Candice Hooper (Ellen Wroe), Peter's girlfriend fell from the bridge, and was impaled on a sailboat mast
2. Isaac Palmer (P. J. Byrne), was trapped inside the bus; his head was crushed on the bus' windshield, and he drowned
3. Olivia Castle (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), was crushed by a car after falling out a bus window into the water
4. Nathan Sears (Arlen Escarpeta), was killed by supporting bridge wires
5. Dennis Lapham (David Koechner), Sam's manager-boss, was covered in hot tar/asphalt and burned to death
6. Peter Friedkin (Miles Fisher), Sam's best friend, was impaled by bridge construction rods
7. Sam Lawton, was sliced in half by bridge's metal slider
8. Molly (Emma Bell), Sam's girlfriend, a survivor

However, Sam's premonition led him to safely rescue everyone. Then, most of the group would again suffer agonizing, gory Rube Goldberg-styled deaths, starting with the demise of Candice, Isaac, and Olivia (the deaths of survivors numbered):

• (1) Candice -- After an awkward dismount from uneven bars during gymnastic practice, her body (knee, neck, and spine) were severely broken and folded back upon itself
• (2) Isaac -- During an acupuncture session at a Chinese spa when a fire broke out, he fell onto the floor, and a heavy Buddha statue on a collapsed shelf above him gorily crushed his head (and sent blood splatter onto the camera lens)
• (3) Olivia -- Prior to her death, she was blinded in her right eye during laser eye surgery. She slipped and fell backwards out of the doctor's bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, crashed onto a car windshield below, and tumbled to the ground (her severed eye rolled away from her body)

A new twist (or "wrinkle") was introduced by coroner Bludworth after their deaths -- he suggested that to cheat death, one must kill someone and thereby claim their remaining lifespan:

Coroner: A lucky few survive a disaster and then one by one, Death comes for them all. You changed things on that bridge. There's a wrinkle in reality. And that wrinkle is you.
Nathan: So what? We're doomed to die? I mean, is that it? We just got our lives back so, what kinda f--ked up karma is that?
Sam: Are you saying that we can't stop this?
Coroner: You were supposed to die on that bridge. You're not supposed to be here. You shorted Death, so you let Death have somebody else in your place. And then you take their spot in the realm of the living. All the days and years that they have yet to live. And they take your place in Death. Then the books are balanced.
Peter: Wait a minute. We kill someone? We get their life? Is that what you're telling me?
Coroner: I don't make the rules. I just clean up after the game is over.

Soon, the eight survivors of the bridge accident began dying in the order they were meant to die on the bridge. And there were two murders or killings as well:

• Roy Carson (Brent Stait) -- Accidentally murdered by co-worker Nathan, impaled through chin by lifting hook
• (4) Dennis -- In a warehouse accident, his eyes and head were penetrated by a wrench sent flying by belt sander
• FBI Agent Jim Block (Courtney B. Vance) -- he was shot three times in the back with a handgun by Peter (whose real targets were Molly and Sam)
• (5) Peter Friedkin -- Sam, who was defending himself and Molly, impaled him in the back with a large meat skewer

Sam and Molly both assumed that they were now safe, since Peter killed Block and Sam killed Peter (and thus acquired Block's life), and Molly never died on the bridge in the first place.

A few weeks later, the remaining survivors were passengers on Flight 180 to Paris (in Final Destination (2000)), who were killed when the plane exploded:

• (6) Molly Harper -- Fell out of plane, bisected by plane wing
• (7) Sam Lawton -- Incinerated in airplane explosion

Simultaneously in the final scene, Nathan Sears was at a small makeshift wake/memorial for Roy in a cocktail bar. Nathan was speaking to factory co-worker John (Roman Podhora), who noted that an autopsy had revealed that their friend Roy was about to die even before his accidental death: "Company did an autopsy for insurance purposes. Turns out Roy had an enlarged blood vessel in his brain so big, it was about to burst. They said he'd be dead any day now." Nathan responded: "Any day?" John's reply was the final line of the film: "Life's a bitch."

A few seconds later, Nathan (8) - not saved by Roy's death, was crushed by the falling plane's fiery landing gear crashing through the bar's ceiling.

(John Carpenter's) The Fog (1980)

A Northern California Fishing Town, Built After The Conspiratorial Sinking of the Leper Ship Elizabeth Dane 100 Years Earlier, Was The Target of Revenge by a Killer Fog Containing Six Zombie-Like Seamen Ghosts From the Ship. The Grand-Son of One of the Original Conspirators, Father Robert Malone, Was the Last of Six to Die in the Town - Beheaded in the Final Scene

Writer/director John Carpenter's next film, following his breakout hit Halloween (1978), was this studio-backed, low-budget horror film about a deadly fog in a Northern California coastal town. [Note: An inferior remake of the film, a teen horror film with an unusual plot twist, was released 25 years later, The Fog (2005) directed by Rupert Wainwright.]

Its tagline provided the summary:

"What you can't see won't hurt you... it'll kill you!"

The under-rated film opened with three ominous foreshadowings:

• An Edgar Allan Poe quote - the final two lines of the poem: "A Dream Within a Dream": "Is All That We See or Seem But a Dream Within a Dream?"
• Just before midnight, resident captain fisherman, Mr. Machen (John Houseman) told a 2 minute, 25 second ghost-story around a beach campfire to spellbound youngsters; he spoke about the sinking of a clipper ship in the fog, and a group of restless, vengeful sea mariners at the bottom of the sea near Spivey Point
• Hard-drinking local priest Father Robert Malone (Hal Holbrook) found the hidden journal-diary (dated 1880) of his grandfather Father Patrick Malone (the town's priest) when a stone brick unexpectedly fell from the wall in his church office; the last entry was dated: "April 30: Midnight 'Til One Belongs to the Dead. Good Lord Deliver Us."

The history of the town from 100 years earlier was partially revealed in the ghost-story and later when Malone read aloud from the journal. A clipper ship, the Elizabeth Dane, was owned by Blake (Rob Bottin) - "a rich man with a cursed condition." He wanted to relocate with his comrades from Tanzier, an island leper colony, and set up a leper colony-town for refuge on the California coast near Antonio Bay.

From midnight to one-o'clock on April 21, 1880, the six founders of Antonio Bay planned the death of Blake and the theft of his gold (for the building of the church and the creation of the township settlement). Blake paid them gold in exchange for permission to settle there. The founders - all greedy and intolerant conspirators (including Malone's grandfather: "an accomplice to murder"), lit a false and deceptive fire during a foggy night that deliberately lured and misguided Blake's ship into treacherous rocks to sink at Spivey Point. All on board expired.

The small fishing town of Antonio Bay was coming up on its 100th year anniversary, to be celebrated on April 21, 1980 - the first full day of the film's plot. Commentary was provided by the omnipresent husky voice of local KAB 1340 radio station DJ, single mother Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau in her screen debut) on the airwaves, broadcasting from the top of the Spivey Point lighthouse. The evening's festivities were being planned by Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her sarcastically-annoying aide Sandy Fadel (Nancy Loomis) at the outdoor park/campground.

In the glowing fog (moving in a direction against the wind, and toward the town), the zombies of Blake and his crew had returned to vengefully kill six local residents - symbolic of six who had perished. Eerie signs of a threatening presence occurred, beginning at midnight on April 21st - "the witching hour." Father Malone sensed that the town was cursed, and the centennial celebration was actually "a travesty - we're honoring murderers":

• Pay phones rang, glass broke, the ground trembled, gas station lights illuminated, a gasoline pump nozzle fell to the ground and leaked gas, car headlights came on and alarms sounded, TV sets turned themselves on, and dogs barked; the windows of the truck of town resident Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) blew out and his radio malfunctioned, shortly after picking up transient hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis)
• A shadowy figure with a hook appeared at Nick's door (where he was bedding down young Elizabeth) at about 1 am
• During the day, Stevie's young son Andy (Ty Mitchell) discovered a gold doubloon on the beach that turned into a broken wooden plank or piece of driftwood, with the word "DANE" on it - later, it seeped water and suddenly came to life with the words: "6 Must Die" before exploding into flames before reverting to normal; on a shorted-out cassette tape recorder/player, Blake's voice vowed revenge: "Something that one lives with like an albatross around the neck. No, more like a millstone. A plumbing stone, by God. Damn them all"

Five deaths were accompanied by the rolling-in of a dense and deadly fog:

• Three local fishermen, Al Williams (John Goff), Tommy Wallace (George 'Buck' Flower), and Dick Baxter (James Canning) were on their 30' sea trawler, the Sea Grass; after they were enveloped by a cold fog bank and their gauges with glass covers were broken, the trio was attacked (and gruesomely murdered) by a ragged crew with knives, hooks and cutlasses from a shadowy ship. (Later, young Baxter's decomposed corpse with gouged-out eyes, the only body found, appeared to have mysteriously drowned; he briefly became reanimated in coroner Dr. Phibes' (Darwin Joston) office, and scratched the number "3" into the floor with a scalpel) - the third death
• With the loss of electrical power and temperatures dropping, local weatherman Dan O'Bannon (Charles Cyphers) was impaled through the throat with a fishing hook by a ghost-zombie; afterwards, telephone lines snapped and the power station shut down as the fog covered the area
• Stevie's babysitter, Mrs. Kobritz (Regina Waldon) was grabbed from behind and slaughtered; Andy was saved by Nick, although in the subsequent nail-biting chase sequence in Nick's truck, Elizabeth became stuck in the mud

In the climactic finale, a group of six main characters sought refuge in the church, where Father Malone sensed he was doomed to be the sixth to die. Mrs. Williams and Malone read from his grandfather's journal, and learned that 100 years earlier, grandfather Father Patrick Malone had melted down the stolen gold into a golden cross:

"Were it possible to raise the dead, I would return Blake's fortune to him intact, save the money spent on these walls that hide it. My fellow conspirators believe that the confiscated fortune has been stolen from them when, in fact, I am the thief and God's temple is the tomb of gold. I am the thief and God's temple is the tomb..."

At the same time, Stevie was pursued across the roof of the lighthouse by ghostly sea zombies in the fog, while a massive golden cross was found hidden in the church wall. With the cross in his arms, Father Malone confronted the ghosts, led by Blake, in the main chapel and attempted to offer himself as a sacrifice:

"Blake, I have your gold. Blake? This is your gold, Blake. My grandfather stole it from you. I'm the one who must answer for it. I'm the sixth conspirator. I'm Father Malone. Take me."

Blake's ghost grabbed the glowing crucifix-cross, but then the zombified crew, fog, and cross abruptly vanished everywhere - at the church and at the lighthouse. Stevie broadcast a warning to listeners:

"I don't know what happened to Antonio Bay tonight. Something came out of the fog and tried to destroy us. In one moment, it vanished. But if this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don't wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water into the darkness. Look for the fog."

[The last four words paid homage to a similar line in The Thing From Another World (1951): "Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!"]

Later that night, Father Malone asked himself: "Why not six, Blake? Why not me?" Blake and his crew suddenly reappeared in the chapel, inevitably returning to claim the town's sixth casualty. Father Malone was decapitated with one swing of Blake's cutlass, as the film went to black - before the credits.

The Forgotten (2004)

The 'Forgotten' Children Were Abducted By Aliens, Who Were Studying the Power of Maternal Love - It Was A Failed Experiment; The Children Were Reunited With Their Parents!

Director Joseph Ruben's mystery/sci-fi horror thriller was taglined:

You'll Never Forget The Ones You Love

A more telling tagline provided a clue to the plot:

What if everything you've experienced, everything you've known... Never happened?

The film began with the main character - a grieving Brooklyn mother:

• Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore), a free-lance book editor named who was receiving therapy for her traumatic loss over 14 months earlier of her 9 year-old son Sam (Christopher Kovaleski), due to a plane crash.

She had saved a scrapbook and other mementos until she noticed signs that her evidence of Sam's existence was slowly evaporating and disappearing (there were erased videotapes, and missing and doctored pictures).

Then, she was being told by her husband and others, including psychiatrist Dr. Jack Munce (Gary Sinise), that Sam hadn't really existed and she should forget Sam entirely. She was diagnosed as suffering from paramnesia - her doctor told her that she never had a son (following a miscarriage), that she had "memory slips," and that she had "invented memories" of Sam. The fact that the evidence was disappearing, according to her husband Jim (Anthony Edwards), meant that she was coming back to reality, but she began to fear that the loss of her son was part of an unusual conspiracy.

[Note: The film also tried to insert doubt about her sanity with her mental lapses about a cup of coffee, the location of her parked red Volvo, and the disappearance of newspaper articles about the plane crash.]

She finally convinced her neighbor, alcoholic ex-hockey player Ash Correll (Dominic West), after ripping wallpaper from one of his bedroom walls to uncover a daughter's drawings, that he also had 'forgotten' a missing daughter named Lauren (Kathryn Faughnan) - one of Sam's playmates, who was on the same plane flight with him to camp. Although he turned her into police at first, Ash then 'remembered' - and they both went on a hunt to find the truth - and their children:

"Now how could two people remember two different children if they never existed?"

After the first half of the film - an emotional and despairing look at maternal suffering, grief, deception and sanity, the film became a sci-fi alien abduction flick (similar to The X-Files). Pursued by agents of NSA and by the police, and by a "Friendly Man" (Linus Roache) (who was invulnerable to harm and had frightening powers), they theorized that their children had been abducted. They kept asking about why they were both told: "There are no children. Forget the children." And why were the children taken? And how could they get them back?

They coerced captured NSA agent Al Petalis (Lee Tergesen) to admit some sort of 'cooperation' - for survival's sake and for all of mankind - with some unknown beings. The two were shockingly told: "The goddamn truth won't fit in your brain. It won't fit in anybody's brain." For some reason, it was clear that Telly had somehow overcome forces compelling her to forget, during some sort of 'alien' experiment about parental memory: "All I know is that you were supposed to forget like everybody else did." When he whispered in her ear: "They're listening" - he was whisked away and the entire house around them was demolished.

The illogical, preposterous and contrived conclusion brought NY Detective Anne Pope (Alfre Woodard) together with Telly at the abandoned Long Island home of the bankrupt President of the ill-fated QuestAir airplane, Robert Shineer (also Linus Roache), where Anne was also abruptly whipped into the sky (by an inexplicable force) after Anne had promised Telly that she would help her to find the children: "I believe you about everything. I've seen it. It's not human. Jesus Christ....We will find your son." And in the next scene, Ash was also whisked away after a crashing fall through a window.

Just before a final showdown with the "Friendly Man," Telly learned from her knowledgeable therapist Munce, who knew about everything all along, that the 'aliens' were conducting invasive memory experiments:

"They've been doing it for years. Maybe forever...We just try to minimize the damage...You've held on and they don't know why. You're just a lab rat to them."

Because Telly had never doubted, through the powerful force of her own will and faith in her son's existence, her son Sam was never forgotten, and remained a strong memory. She kept insisting on getting her son back -- when she asked the 'alien': "He's just a little boy. What could you possibly learn from him?", she was told that she was the experiment:

Nothing...It was never about the children...Your connection, mother to child. Like an invisible tissue. We can even measure its energy. But we don't fully understand it, so I posed the question: 'Can it be dissolved?' And it can. Except for you.

The 'alien' again demanded that Telly forget her son so that his experiment wouldn't fail, explaining: "I'm accountable. I can't let that happen. And time is running out." He yelled at her: "You need to forget" and shattered glass throughout the building with his powerful voice -- but she refused to cooperate, even when he choked her and observed: "You're different from the others. Why?" He compelled her to forget her son Sam: "It's better this way. You won't be haunted by his memory. You could have a life again." He forced her to revisit her delivery day in the hospital - "I need that first memory. Give me that first memory!" - and wiped her memory clean of the birth and her first view of Sam.

Although that particular memory was wiped clean, he didn't count on her remembering her earlier pregnancy as she touched her belly ("I had life inside of me. I had life. I have a child. I have a son. I have a son. His name is Sam, you son-of-a-bitch!") -- and as the 'alien' spoke: "I need more time" - he was abruptly yanked through the roof. Presumably, the alien experiment had failed.

In the film's happy conclusion, Telly was reunited with her son Sam on a playground, and Lauren was also there, with Ash watching her from a nearby swing. Telly and Ash became reacquainted (Ash: "I think we met before"). Everything was restored to normal by the 'alien' life-form (was a time clock wound backwards, or was there another memory trick being played?) - and only Telly could recollect what had happened (she had fallen in love with Ash, but was still married to her husband, who at one point had entirely forgotten her!).

1408 (2007) (Theatrical Version)

Writer Mike Enslin Suffered From a Lack of Faith When His Young Daughter Katie Died of Cancer, and He Separated From His Wife Lily; He Was Metaphorically and Physically Dying (in Room 1408), Until He Found a Way to Escape, Reaffirm Life, and Reconcile with Lily; His Voice-Recorder Proved That The 'Ghost' of Katie Did Visit Him in the Room

This quirky mystery-horror thriller from Swedish director Mikael Håfstrom was based upon a Stephen King novella (published in the compilation "Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales"). There were various alternate endings to the film - described below was the theatrical version.

Its main character was:

• Mike Enslin (John Cusack), a cynical researcher and best-selling "noted occult writer" of investigative studies into haunted or paranormal vacation destinations and locales (including the fictional Dolphin Hotel on Lexington Ave. in NYC)

Enslin's latest ghost survival guide was titled "10 Haunted Hotels." Other titles he wrote were:

• "10 Haunted Graveyards"
• "10 Haunted AnteBellum Mansions"
• "10 Haunted Lighthouses"

He rated locales on a "Shiver Scale" of 1-10 skulls (with ten the highest). In every new site in which he personally stayed, he brought along an EMF meter, full-range spectrometer, and an infrared camera to scientifically measure findings. He wore a cap reading: "Paranoia is Total Awareness."

One crucial fact about him was his skeptical disbelief in the paranormal or supernatural. His goal was to debunk the idea of ghosts (what he termed "spook-house bulls--t"). He was an avowed athiest, who didn't believe that there was a God to protect humans from "ghoulies and ghosties."

At a book-signing talk, one admirer named Anna (Alexandra Silber) presented him with his first, much older, inspirational book to sign (it was autobiographical - he was the "bastard" father!). Its title was a clue to the remainder of the film: "The Long Road Home."

He had changed after suffering an extreme emotional tragedy in his family, yet to be revealed (the terminal illness/death of his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony)), and his estrangement from his wife Lily (Mary McCormack) who lived in New York. He had abandoned his more promising literary career for the less-personal market of a series of top 10 horror books, while surfing and living in Hermosa Beach, California. Later, he was described as "full of cynicism...talented intelligent man who doesn't believe in anything or anyone but himself."

While ocean surfing, he experienced a major concussion when hit in the head by his board. However, everything that happened afterwards could not be interpreted as a dream!

[Viewed a second time later in the film, an airplane flying above him was trailing a sign advertising auto insurance by calling 1-LOW-FEE-1408 just before the accident occurred.]

He received an unsigned picture postcard (sent in late May 2007 - the present-day framework of the film) from the Dolphin Hotel (in New York City's Manhattan) with a brief message: "Don't Enter 1408."

[Note: Why would he want to investigate another hotel, since he had just finished his 'haunted hotel' book? Confusingly, he told his publisher: "It'll make a solid closing chapter of the book."]

The challenge took Mike to the East Coast (and New York City - where all his real-life 'ghosts' did indeed reside). Although dissuaded, he insisted on staying in Room 1408 of the Dolphin (located at 2254 Lexington Ave - the numbers added up to 13), although the hotel's manager Mr. Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) desperately tried to scare him away with tales of both haunted and natural deaths in Room 1408 (the numbers added up to 13, and the room was on the '13th floor'). Olin offered him a drink of cognac grande champagne, 1939's "Les Cinquante Sept Décès" (French for "The 57 Deaths"), forcing Enslin to later ask himself if he had been drugged.

[Note: Olin described 56 deaths in the room, so the 57th was possibly preordained for Enslin.]

Olin's final threat was - "it's an evil f--king room!" Other historical details in the 95 year history of the hotel:

• "No one's ever lasted more than an hour" in the room; there were four deaths under Olin's "watch"
• The hotel had seen 21 murders or suicides: "Seven jumpers, four overdoses, five hangings, three mutilations, two stranglings"; also there were "twenty-two natural deaths"; all totaled, there were 56 deaths in Room 1408, ranging from heart-attacks, strokes, to a drowning ("Mr. Grady Miller drowned in his chicken soup"); the first victim was Mr. Kevin O'Malley, a sewing machine salesman, who cut his own throat, October, 1912, the first week the hotel opened

The film played upon primal fears (isolation, alienation, unease and loneliness in an unfamiliar surrounding, such as a hotel room), and the major problems customers always find in hotel rooms ("Hotel rooms are a naturally creepy place") such as strange noises or flashes, although exaggerated (Enslin called the room a 'sarcophagal chamber'):

• Undetected turn-down service in the room (toilet paper replaced and neatly folded, two courtesy chocolates on the bed pillow)
• Crooked and dull "thrift-store" paintings (the three drawings eerlily came to life - one flooded the room)
• The clock radio loudly turned itself on (ironically playing The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun"); it also started a count-down of one-hour (from 60 minutes); later when he disconnected the cord, the clock radio kept playing
• A baby cried in the next room through the thin walls
• A faulty thermostat (the readings went from 80 degrees F - 'hot' and delusional at first, and then to 0 degrees - signifying frozenness and death)
• A high-pitched noise left him temporarily deaf
• A window slammed shut unexpectedly on his hand; the bathroom sink faucet suddenly was scalding hot
• A misdirected phone call was from room-service, but the rude caller ignored his requests
• A broken key and door handle made the room a prison
• Two ghost spectres (ghosts of the room's past victims) suicidally jumped from windows
• Sinister reflections were seen in a window across the street - he found that he was a mirror-reflection of himself in an adjacent building's room
• The lampshade without a lamp (he had thrown the lamp out the window to attract attention) was still giving off light
• A spy-cam was located in the upper air vent
• There were cracked and bleeding walls
• Although Mike attempted to escape, an outer building ledge was not a means of escape (none of the other rooms on the 14th floor had windows)
• Activated sprinklers sprayed the room and cut off his communications through his laptop

Most importantly, in his subconscious, he was haunted by the voice of his deceased daughter Katie playing hide-and-seek. Enslin spoke into his voice-recorder about running away from reality: "You're running to places that aren't real...You're losing the plot. You're losing the whole goddamn structure" - the crux of his life's difficulties! He recalled that his daughter had died of cancer, a time when he had also lost faith in God ("What kind of God would do this to a little girl?"). He had shattered his family's hopes about contemplating and promising the prospects of life after death to their daughter. He had argued with Lily about their treatment of dying Katie - when Lily gave her false hope about fantasies of a heaven:

"We should have done more...We should have helped her fight instead of filling her head full of these stories about heavens and the clouds and nirvana, and all that bulls--t."

And he had walked out on Lily a year earlier - not explaining whether it was a divorce or separation.

During his intense hallucinations in the room, he was literally facing his own physical death (he metaphorically was the "man overboard" in the animated painting in the room that came alive, drowning in the room (he also was reliving his earlier surfboard accident in the California surf!). Now, it appeared that he was "ready to deal with this stuff," as Lily suggested. He rescued himself by communicating with Lily through his laptop, bringing him peace, comfort, and calm. (In his delusion, she visited him in LA as he was recovering from his surfing accident. He explained to his wife that he had a vivid dream of going to NY and staying in Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel).

He believed that he had escaped, but then he found himself back in the nightmarish Room 1408, looping back into the "horrible dream," although momentarily he thought he had been rescued and renewed. He was back in the imprisoning room - doomed. The "ghost" of Mike's daughter Katie came to him for a loving embrace, but then died and crumbled in his arms, as he distressingly asserted: "You can't take her twice."

He received one final recorded hotel phone call with a choice: "You can choose to relive this hour over and over, or you can take advantage of our express check-out system." He asked: "Why don't you just kill me?" and imagined hanging himself. The operator responded: "Because all guests of this hotel enjoy free will, Mr. Enslin." Mike refused to give up, changed his mind and chose life - he told the phone operator that he wasn't ready yet to check out.

Finally admitting that he had lived a selfish life, he escaped by taking the literal advice of a hand-scratched message on a brick wall: "BURN ME ALIVE!" He set the room afire with a molotov cocktail (with a bottle of Bourbon and string), setting off alarms and summoning firetrucks to the rescue. On the street below, Lily begged the firemen to find him on the 14th floor and rescue him. Mr. Olin was heard congratulating Enslin for living: "Well done, Mr. Enslin" and for destroying his imprisoning room. Mike recuperated in a NY hospital, and was moving back (or returning 'home') to Los Angeles to be with Lily.

In voice-over, he ended the film - as he wrote the postscript for his book (he gave the Dolphin 10 skulls):

That day, Lily saved my life. And the Dolphin is closed, at least for now. Believe what you want. All I know is, no more ghost stories. I've checked out.

The most important possession he kept from the fire was his voice-recorder. In the midst of the move to LA, he found his damaged mini-tape recorder in a box, and a few other mementos from the Dolphin Hotel - he refused to throw them out, asserting: "Sometimes you can't get rid of bad memories. You've just got to live with them." He fixed the machine and played back one of the audio recordings he had made, as Lily listened in disbelief - at the end of the tape, Katie was speaking to him when he was hugging her: ("I've got you now, Katie. Oh my God. I'm not gonna let you go") in the hotel room, proving that the events in 1408 actually happened (and that Katie's 'ghost' was real).

Fracture (2007)

Crawford Shot His Unfaithful Wife Jennifer in the Face After Cleverly Switching Weapons and Using the Identical Gun of Her Virile Lover Lt. Nunally (Who Was Also the Investigating Cop); During the Subsequent Trial, Crawford Was Declared Innocent of "Attempted Murder." Afterwards He Ordered Comatose Wife Jennifer Removed From Life Support, and The Incriminating Bullet Lodged in Her Head Was Retrieved and Tested. He also Admitted His Crime (Thinking He Was Protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause), But Didn't Realize After Confessing That He Could Now Be Fully Retried for "Murder" with New Evidence (the Switched Guns, the Bullet, Etc.)

Director Gregory Hoblit's intense legal thriller and crime mystery involved an attempted murder and the subsequent trial. Its tagline stated:

"I SHOT MY WIFE...PROVE IT."

The two main protagonists who were to become engaged in a battle of wits in the courtroom attempted-murder trial were:

• Theodore "Ted" Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), the defendant, a smartly intelligent, meticulous Irish aeronautical structural engineer in Los Angeles, interested in marble drop structures and in the study of what made things fracture
• Deputy DA William "Willy" Beachum (Ryan Gosling), an ambitious, hot shot lawyer

In the film's opening, Crawford found evidence (on November 10th) that his young attractive 'trophy' wife Jennifer (or "Jen") (Embeth Davidtz) was engaged in an affair (later revealed as twice-per-week) in the same hotel in Santa Monica (in LA's Southern California). She was swimming in the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows pool area with virile Lt. Robert Nunally (Billy Burke), LAPD's head hostage negotiator, where both signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

[Plot Twist: Offscreen, Crawford switched his Glock 45 gun with Nunally's identical gun in the hotel room: "You took his, you put yours in his place."]

After his cheating and unhappy wife drove home, Crawford confronted her ("Knowledge is pain"), told her he loved her, then seriously wounded her by shooting her in the head at close range as she turned toward him. He wiped the used shell casing with a handkerchief. He also fired three shots at nearby windows to scare off the gardener, and then scrubbed his forearms and face with hot water.

[Plot Twist: Crawford shot his wife with Nunally's gun.]

The investigating cop sent to the scene was Lt. Nunally, who was soon shocked to find the victim was his secret lover. Crawford allowed only Nunally into the house - and then persuaded that they both put down their pistols. Crawford then confessed on the scene to shooting his wife ("It's just like I suddenly snapped, and I got the gun and I shot her in the head. I know it was wrong. Are you listening to me, Rob?"), and hinted that he knew Nunally had 'screwed' his wife.

Nunally saw his own lover - bloody, comatose and barely alive on the floor in an adjoining room, and he tried to revive her. When Crawford appeared behind him in the room brandishing a gun, Nunally grabbed for the weapon, then tackled and assaulted Crawford before he was arrested by SWAT team members, and charged with the crime. Crawford's weapon was taken as evidence and bagged.

[Plot Twist: Nunally was actually carrying Crawford's gun when he arrived. While Nunally briefly tended to Jennifer and was distracted, Crawford reloaded Nunally's gun (that had been used to commit the crime, with four bullets fired) and placed it back where Nunally had left his weapon, while at the same time taking back his original, unused and unfired gun. No one noticed the switch before Crawford was arrested. The weapon that was taken as evidence - the murder weapon - was Crawford's unused gun.]

During an immediate courtroom trial in which Beachum thought he had a 'foolproof' open-and-shut attempted murder case (with a weapon and a signed confession), Crawford represented himself, and challenged Beachum before the trial: "You look closely enough, you'll find everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later" -

• According to forensics, the murder weapon (Crawford's unused gun that was bought a month earlier) had never been fired, did not have fingerprints, and did not match the four shell casings at the crime scene.
  [The real weapon was in the possession of an unwitting Nunally, who had taken it from the house, and possessed it during the entire trial: "And then you knew that he would just walk the murder weapon right outta the house...He sat through the entire trial wearing the only piece of evidence on his hip. Then he used it on himself."]
• Crawford's confession of guilt to Nunally was considered inadmissable: (1) it occurred in the house, when there was an assault/arrest between Crawford and his wife's own lover (who was "f--king the victim"), and (2) Nunally was also present during Crawford's confession in the police station when he signed his confession, causing Crawford 'duress': "The confessions and any evidence gathered while Mr. Nunally was present will all have to be excluded as 'fruit of the poisonous tree'."
• Hotel video showed someone in a floppy white hat and sunglasses entering the hotel room - but the person's face could not be identified conclusively.
• Without any evidence tying Crawford to the murder weapon, he was acquitted.
• A depressed Nunally committed suicide outside the courtroom with his own gun, using the murder weapon on himself.

Jennifer was the sole witness who could testify against her husband Crawford (who had shot her), but hopes of her testifying against him vanished when Crawford threatened to use his 'health care proxy,' and he ordered her removed or unplugged from life support. Beachum worried: "This man's gonna kill his wife." Beachum secured a court order to stop the disconnection, and delivered it to the medical center just as Jennifer was flat-lining - he was unsuccessful in halting her death. Beachum was tipped off to the possibility of two identical guns (used by Nunally and Crawford) when he accidentally picked up the cellphone of his assistant.

After Jennifer's death, the incriminating bullet in her head was examined and matched up with the weapon (removing it while she was alive was too risky). Beachum told Crawford in his home during their final confrontation:

"I got the bullet, the one in your wife's head. That one we couldn't take out as long as she was alive. I'm pretty sure it's gonna match Nunally's and that gives me the murder weapon."

[Possible Plot Hole: However, since the gun was eventually found in Nunally’s possession, bearing only his fingerprints, it couldn't really be traced back to Crawford.]

Egotistical Crawford was confident about revealing to Beachum his crime of attempted murder - and he confessed to his guilt:

"I bet you don't even need a confession anymore, do you, Willy? Oh, I tell you what, though, old sport. Uh, let's make you a new one just in case. The real deal, all the juicy details. You can get your rocks off on that, then, can't ya? Huh? Yeah. I shot my wife in the face. Right there. She didn't look so pretty after that. And I stood there looking down at her. And I watched her eyes go all empty. I could smell the blood and the shit. Smelled like metal. And the look on his face. Aw, heh, he's trying to get her back to life, you see. And I was pissing myself laughing, because I took both the bastards out with one f--king bullet. Yeah."

Crawford then smirked and believed that he was protected by the "double jeopardy clause":

"I went to trial, you lost. Oh, pity about that. Uh, doesn't matter what you do now. Doesn't matter what you know. I mean, she could come back from the dead, you see and testify, spill the beans, and it would mean nothing. So you can't touch me, ever."

Beachum countered that now that Crawford had actually killed his wife, he could be charged with murder:

"She was alive. When you first went to trial for attempted murder, your wife was still alive. But you just had to pull that plug, didn't ya? Hmm? Well, now she's dead, and that's murder. That's homicide, first degree, and that's new charges. There's new evidence. That's a new trial."

Beachum walked outside, where police had been listening in, and Crawford was subsequently charged with murder. As the film concluded, once again, Beachum was back in court trying Crawford for the new crime.

Frailty (2001)

Adam Meiks Was Actually Posing as His Brother Fenton Meiks, On A Mission to Destroy Demons And Get Away With Murder

This haunting psychological horror-thriller by Bill Paxton (his directorial debut film) had the tagline:

"No Soul is Safe."

A person claiming to be Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey as adult) spontaneously confessed to Dallas FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe).

He claimed that his dead brother Adam (Levi Kreis as adult) (whose body was in an ambulance after he committed suicide) was the likely, self-proclaimed "God's Hand" serial killer. Adam was to be buried in his hometown of Thurman, Texas, in a public rose garden.

It was later revealed, through flashbacks, that both Adam (Jeremy Sumpter as young Adam) and Fenton (Matthew O'Leary as young Fenton) had been brought up in a strictly-religious household with a delusional, possibly schizophrenic, redneck widowed father (Bill Paxton). Their crazed father had religious visions of "God's will" that led him to enact divine retribution as a mission - to kill 'demons' that he saw in various individuals ("They may look like people on the outside, but inside...", and "We don't kill people, we destroy demons").

Individuals who were identified as demons were abducted, taken to the Meiks home, axed to death, and then buried in the rose garden. Both sons were present for the 'divine' slayings - and were required by their father to be his murderous accomplices. As young boys, Fenton had urged his brother Adam to make a promise, and bury him in the rose garden if he was ever to be 'destroyed':

Adam? If you ever destroy me, promise me you'll bury me here.

In the present day, "Fenton" (actually Adam) took agent Doyle to the public rose garden near his old home, where he claimed that his brother Fenton was buried. Doyle was confused. "Fenton" then admitted that it all made sense "if that man standing in front of you is Adam Meiks."

In the upending, contrived twist ending, there was now an abrupt change in the identity of the film's narrator - it was Adam, not Fenton, who had been narrating and was the surviving brother. Adam had 'destroyed' his brother Fenton, and then posed as Fenton to cover up. Adam then eerily confessed to Doyle that only 'demons' were buried in the rose garden - and he had regarded Fenton as a demon:

Fenton didn't bury his victims here. He kept them as trophies in his basement. This is where I put demons.

As it turned out in the film's conclusion, young Adam was the only one who truly shared his father's delusions and killer impulses, and became the new "God's Hand" serial killer. Young Adam had acquired the duty of killing demons, and accepted the task of killing his brother Fenton. (Fenton couldn't accept the mantle of being a killer, and had rebelled against their father with an axe). Adam came up behind his brother Fenton and clobbered him on the head (Fenton had not committed suicide).

Then, after Doyle accused Adam of being a murderer, Adam counter-accused Doyle of also being a 'demon' - a mother-murderer - who deserved to justifiably be killed. Upon touching Doyle, Adam had a vision of Doyle murdering his mother:

"Maybe. That's not gonna bring your mother back, is it? She's dead and her killer got away, didn't he?...You were on my list. You didn't think anybody knew about that, did you? God knew. That's why he sent me."

Doyle in Grave

Adam Axed Doyle with "Otis"

Adam threw Doyle's body in an open grave, took an axe, and mortally struck Doyle. Adam predicted (rightly) that everyone would be looking for Fenton - not himself. Since everyone thought that the confessor in Doyle's office was Fenton, Adam (posing as Fenton) was able to get away with the murder (and the fuzzy security camera pictures didn't help to identify him when he first came to the Dallas FBI office).

When FBI agents burst into Fenton's home, they found an incriminating list of victims - including the latest crossed off name ("Wesley Doyle"). Doyle's bloody wallet was found in the basement. All of the clues in Doyle's disappearance and death led to "Fenton."

In the final scene, FBI Agent Griffin Hull (Derk Cheetwood) went to Adam's town in Enid County to tell him about his brother Fenton's guilt and involvement. He requested that Adam provide any further information or leads.

Adam was the town sheriff and his wife Becky (Missy Crider) was pregnant:

Adam: You're a good man, Agent Hull. (Hull drove off)
Becky: Everything okay, Adam?
Adam: Everything's just fine, Becky. God's will has been served. Becky: Praise God.

Frankenhooker (1990)

Jeffrey Woke Up With a Hooker's Body

Horror filmmaker Frank Henenlotter's popular midnight movie mixed black comedy, horror, and sleazy sexploitation, in order to update Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and serve as a follow-up film to the Re-Animator series. Its humorous tagline was:

She's hot. She's sexy. And she's sutured to please.

The main character in this R-rated (available as "unrated" also) film was electrician/mad scientist Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) - a neurotic medical school dropout (now a blue-collar engineer). He lived with his mother (Louise Lasser) and was engaged to Elizabeth Shelley (ex-Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen). He became insane when Elizabeth was chewed up by his remote-controlled lawn-mower in a freak and tragic accident.

After preserving her head in a freezer (in a gooey purple liquid), his goal was to resurrect her body to its former self by stitching the head to other female body parts. He murdered a group of prostitutes in a hotel by serving them "super-crack" - causing them to detonate (in the film's most memorable sequence), and then took their severed limbs and parts to his laboratory to sew together and re-animate with electricity. His resultant "Bride of Frankenstein" was a sexually-ravenous nymphomaniac and undead (but deadly) "Frankenhooker" who went on the prowl for johns ("Wanna date?"). Every time she kissed a male client, he would explode.

In the most bizarre, sickly humorous twist ending - a great surprise - after Jeffrey was decapitated by a pimp named Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez), he had his head grafted onto the body of a large breasted hooker's body in order to be rejuvenated. As he awoke on an uprighted table, he lamented to Elizabeth:

Jeffrey: Holy s--t! That's not my hand. What are these boobs? Elizabeth, what did you do to me?
Elizabeth: I can explain. Obviously, since your theory only works on female body parts, I couldn't reuse your old body, or even Zorro's, so naturally, I had to make some changes. (She uncovered a mirror for a full view)
Jeffrey: No! Where's my johnson? What did you do to me, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth: Granted, what I did may have been a bit unorthodox, but hey, you look great, and you're alive, and you're back with me and I love you. I love you, Jeffrey, and we're together again. All of us, together again. Together again!

The film concluded with Jeffrey moaning in anguish.

Frantic (1988)

During a Trade-Swap (Of a Smuggled Atomic Bomb Detonator Device) Between Arab Terrorists and Dr. Walker (Aided by Drug Smuggler Michelle), His Kidnapped, Ransomed Wife Sondra Was Freed; During the Confrontation, Michelle Was Caught in the Crossfire (Shot and Killed by Police); Afterwards, Walker Threw the Device Into the Seine River

Director Roman Polanski's suspenseful, Hitchcock-like mystery-thriller began with American Dr. Richard Walker (Harrison Ford) and his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley) arriving in Paris for a medical conference where he was to deliver a paper. They had honeymooned there 20 years earlier. At their hotel while she was unpacking, they both discovered that they couldn't unlock her suitcase. While Dr. Walker was taking a shower, she mysteriously disappeared (she was forcibly taken and forced into a car).

Jet-lagged and fatigued and unable to speak French, he followed various leads to search for her, with little assistance from hotel staff, Parisian police and the bureaucratic US Embassy, and was unable to locate his missing (presumably kidnapped) wife.

Apparently, Sondra had mistakenly picked up the wrong suitcase at the airport. [She took a similar-looking suitcase that contained a smuggled and concealed atomic bomb detonator.] After prying open the mistakenly-taken suitcase, Walker found - among other things - a small Lady Liberty statue ceramic replica. He didn't know that hidden inside the statue was an atom bomb device, a krytron (a small electronic detonator for a nuclear bomb) - the film's MacGuffin.

While following clues, he came across a streetwise young woman - a mischievous, sexy courier (career smuggler) named Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner). She admitted to picking up the wrong suitcase at the airport - Sondra's. Then, she agreed to help him, in exchange for the money she was owed for trafficking in narcotics, to search for their suitcase. As she helped him during a frantic and tense search, he stumbled across an underworld of European drug smuggling involved in terrorist arms sales.

In the film's conclusion set by the River Seine, the two confronted two Arab terrorists on a boat, who released Walker's wife unharmed ("My wife first!"), in exchange for the trigger device. With the device in her hand, Michelle approached the terrorists and demanded to be paid 10,000 francs ("Give me my money or I'll throw your f--king thing in the river!...I still wasn't paid"). During intense crossfire in a gunfight with police from a nearby bridge, the terrorist dealers were killed, and Michelle was lethally shot.

Before dying, Michelle slipped the trigger device into Walker's right coat pocket. An angry and disgusted Walker threw the krytron device into the fast-moving river after asking the police agents:

"This? This is what you want?"

Freaks (1932)

The Freaks Sought Revenge Against Cleopatra - Turning Her Into a Half-Chicken/Half-Human 'Freak'

Tod Browning directed the unusual, gothic film with real-life side-show "freaks" - one of his best works. This cult film redefined the concepts of beauty, love, and abnormality, but was so disturbingly ahead of its time that audiences stayed away in huge numbers, and it was even banned for 30 years in England.

Seeking revenge on evil, gold-digging aerialist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) for plotting to kill the wealthy midget Hans (Harry Earles) by poisoning him, fellow freaks attacked her lover - strongman Hercules (Henry Victor) with knives and killed him during a fierce rainstorm (the murder was off-screen).

The freaks also put their curse on Cleopatra by turning her into a half-chicken woman (off-screen). She was then displayed in the carnival as a side-show 'freak.'

Friday the 13th (1980)

The Killer Was Mrs. Voorhees, Jason's Vengeful Mother 22 Years After Her Son 'Died' At the Camp Due to Counselor Negligence. It Was Possible That Jason Had Survived to Take Revenge

In this classic slasher film set in either 1979 or 1980 (on a full-moon Friday the 13th, the birthday of Jason!), the serial killer was not son Jason Voorhees (Ari Lehman) - emphasized in the opening of the film Scream (1996), but his camp kitchen-worker mother Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer).

She was taking revenge for her 11 year-old son's accidental death from drowning in the lake over two decades earlier in 1957 (when camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake were distracted while having sex and avoided their supervisory duties).

In the shock ending, after sole surviving camp counselor Alice Hardy (Adrienne King) decapitated the insane woman with her own machete after a violent struggle by the lake, she took a canoe ride out to the middle of the tranquil lake, where the long-lost, re-animated, half-decomposed corpse of Jason suddenly burst out of the lake and attacked her the next dawn.

She was grabbed by the neck and pulled underwater, but it all appeared to be an hallucinatory nightmare (or was it real?) as Alice awakened screaming "No!" in a hospital bed. She was told by a police officer that she was the sole survivor:

"Ma'am, we didn't find any boy."

The film ended after she pondered to herself:

"But he...then he's still there."

Jason would not become the killer until the next installment of the franchise, Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981). The sequel's prologue recapped the ending of the 1980 film - two months later, Alice was reliving the horror of that night, when she decapitated Mrs. Voorhees with a machete, was attacked in a canoe on the lake by the rotting decomposed corpse of Jason, awoke screaming in a hospital bed, and was told by a police officer that she alone had been pulled from the lake - culminating with her final words in the original film: "Then he's still there." She was struggling to put her life back together, as she told her mother on the phone.

Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

Paramedic Roy Was The Killer, Using The Persona of "Jason" As A Cover-Up! After His Son's Death, Joey's Father Roy Went Insane And Sought Revenge

In this fifth installment about the hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees, the tagline was:

"If Jason still haunts you, you're not alone..."

Although the film's plot led you to believe that Jason was the returning maniacal, homicidal killer, most of the film's murders (there were 22 total deaths) were committed by a 'Jason' copy-cat - paramedic Roy Burns (Dick Wieand), who sliced, stabbed and spiked seventeen (17) individuals throughout the film.

His killing rampage, mostly of peripheral characters, was triggered by the sight of the hacked body of a troubled youth at Pinehurst halfway house when he came to take away the corpse of obese chocolate bar-eating orphan Joey Burns (Dominick Brascia), who had been chopped up with an axe by angry, short-haired resident Vic (Mark Venturini). He was visibly upset by the bloody and maimed remains of the victim lying in hacked-up pieces on the ground. [Note: Roy was revealed later in the film to be Joey's father.]

The serial killer was revealed in the conclusion when 'Jason' was knocked out of an upper barn window by hallucinatory, mentally-disturbed and Jason-crazed Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd), one of the halfway house residents. 'Jason's' body was impaled onto a bed of iron-spiked farm equipment (a tractor harrow) below. The hockey-mask was dislodged from his face and the rain washed away his 'Jason' makeup, showing that he was not 'Jason,' but disgruntled ambulance paramedic Roy Burns.

Sheriff Tucker (Marco St. John) explained that Roy was seeking retribution for the death of his long-lost patient son Joey and had used the persona of 'Jason' as a cover-up:

The kid who was axed to death at the woodpile was Roy's son. God only knows why Roy kept it hidden all these years, but he did. Roy was a real loner.

Feeling guilty for abandoning his infant son, the disgruntled psychopath Roy had sought vengeance on those who had tormented Joey - and many others. When Roy arrived on the traumatic scene and saw his son "all hacked to pieces," he went insanely crazy. His rationale was explained:

"I guess he used the Jason thing to cover up with."

As the film concluded (in preparation for the next sequel), it concentrated on the character of Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd). 10 years earlier (in Friday the 13th, The Final Chapter (1984)), he had killed the goalie hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees.

While recovering in the hospital, Tommy experienced another hallucination or nightmare of Jason, but he faced his fears and made him disappear. However, it wasn't just a dream the second time around. Tommy donned the hockey mask and stabbed to death Pinehurst's Assistant Director Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman) who had come into his room. He prepared to attack her in the second instance (he was hiding behind his room's door) with an upraised machete.

Stabbing - A Nightmare Dream!

Hallucinatory, Jason-Crazed Tommy (John Shepherd)

Machete-Stabbing Victim Director Pam Roberts

(Was he the next Jason?)

The film ended with a zoom to his eyeball under the mask, and a fade to black before the credits.