ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

From IMDb:  Release prematurely from a North Eastern mental institution, George Tatum (Baird Stafford) journeys back down to his home in Florida. Along the way, he has recurring nightmares of a violent incident from his childhood, which forces him to kill again. George's ex-wife, Susan Temper (Sharon Smith), young son C.J. (C.J. Cooke), and the family babysitter begin to receive "hang-up" calls, which none of them realize is George making sure his family is home. The closer George gets to his destination, the more gruesome his murders become and the memories of his first childhood murder intensify. Wearing an old-man mask to conceal his identity, George makes his way into his old house with an icepick, kills the babysitter, and goes after his son and two daughters, who have taken refuge in their mother's bedroom on the second floor. Young C.J. manages to shoot the masked maniac through a hole hacked into the door, causing George to fall back down the staircase. As he lies dying, George has a full recall of his childhood, where upon catching his father cheating on his mother with a mistress, he brutally murders both of them with an axe. As George is carried off in a stretcher, his wife comes home, identifies her husband, and goes into a screaming fit. Young C.J. is taken for questioning by the police and winks into the camera as the final image of the film.

[memento]

Plot: Matt Whitlock is the Chief of Police in a small town outside of Miami, Florida, living and working in a place that is normally reserved for those who have retired and spend the rest of their days relaxing in the sun. Although he enjoys his job, his drinking whilst on duty is an obvious flaw in his character, brought about in ways by his recent divorce from wife Alex. Whitlock is currently having an affair with a local resident, Ann Merai Harrison, whose abusive husband Chris has driven her to adultery. Recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ann Merai plans on rewarding Whitlock's loyalty to her with a handsome payout from her life insurance. After an apparent arson attack on their house kills Ann Merai and Chris, Alex arrives back on the scene as the detective in charge of the case - and Whitlock soon finds himself the prime suspect...

[southendmd]

Plot:  An inventor needs cash to develop his big idea. His wife, who loves him, decides to raise it for him by divorcing him and marrying a millionaire.

Written and directed by Preston Sturges, with Claudette Colbert, Joel McRae, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee.

[southendmd]

Plot:  An insurance salesman/adjuster discovers his entire life is actually a TV show.

Trivia:  The exterior shots of 'Seahaven' were shot in the beach town of Seaside, Florida.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  Ruby, a young woman, arrives in a Florida resort town during the off season to make a fresh start. She gets work as a sales clerk in a souvineer shop run by Mildred Chambers. She dates, and sleeps with, Ricky Chambers, Mildred's conceited son, but breaks off with him when she finds she's just another conquest. She gets involved with Mike, a left-wing greenhouse worker. As the seasons change, Ruby's relationships with others and herself go through metamorphoses as she makes choices and discoveries establishing her own identity. A character study.

[oilgun]

Plot:   A woman and her new husband returns to her hometown roots in coastal northern Florida, and must deal with family, business, and encroaching real estate development.

[southendmd]

Plot:  When a secret agent learns of his wife's extra-marital affair, he pursues her and uses his intelligence resources in a job he kept secret from her.

Filmed in part, in Marathon, Miami and Key West.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  A native son returns to the isolated, backwards village in the Okefenokee Swamp where he was raised, with ideas of bringing modern-day progress in terms of schools, canals, new roads, running-water and other needed changes, but is met with resistance by nearly all of the residents, some out of ignorance and some with selfish vested interests in seeing that no changes be made.

[memento]

Synopsis: Virgil Bliss (Clint Jordan) is a man obsessed with living a normal life, finding a good job, marrying a decent woman, and building a family of his own. The only problem, however, is that Virgil is a recently paroled career thief with a hair-trigger temper and the social skills of a child.

At the halfway house where he gets his first taste of freedom in nearly a decade, Virgil meets Manny Alvarez (Anthony Gorman), a fiery miscreant who takes the emotionally naive Virgil under his wing and initiates him in the ways of the world. It's Manny who introduces Virgil to Ruby (Kirsten Russell), an opportunistic junkie with whom Virgil falls instantly in love.

After a bumpy start, Virgil and Ruby begin to trust one another. Ruby shares with Virgil her plans to win back custody of her four-year-old son, currently living with a foster family in Florida. In another moment, the normally tight-lipped Virgil breaks down and recounts the horrible and senseless crime that landed him in prison.

Upon his release from the halfway house, Virgil finds work as a janitor and moves into Ruby's apartment. Together they form a kind of damaged family unit, dogged by mistrust, chemical dependency and the weight of their wasted lives, but a family nonetheless.

An already shaky domestic arrangement gets even shakier when the psychotic Manny Alvarez appears on Virgil and Ruby's doorstep. Unimpressed by Virgil's attempts to walk the straight and narrow, Manny decides a few minor adjustments are in order. As Manny expertly unravels all that Virgil has accomplished, Virgil learns a brutal and final lesson in the limits of love and his own good intentions...
   

[southendmd]

IMDb comment:  Taken in the context of the 'feather' craze that almost decimated the birds of the Everglades at the turn of the 20th Century, this movie -almost- presaged Rachel Carson and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. A moving depiction of the River Of Grass, those who lived WITH it and those who tried to DESTROY it. Christopher Plummer and Burl Ives gave this movie a depth that seemed effortless It deserved a wider release and I can only hope it will be issued as a DVD. It was based upon a true story of a federal wildlife ranger.