Dr. Steven Reed (Barry Morgan) has a comfortable life. He is married with a successful practice, and a big house in a nice neighborhood. But all that is about to change dramatically.
While his wife is away, he goes to a bar to have some dinner and a quiet drink. There he encounters an attractive young woman, Tippy (Melanie Spencer), who tries to pick him up. He politely refuses, and she leaves, only to return later with the peace offering of a beer, which Dr. Steve accepts. However, Tippy has slipped a mickey into the beer. Steve takes her home with him and, not thinking clearly due to the drug in his system, sleeps with her. Though he feels remorseful afterwards, he thinks it’s all innocent fun until he gets a knock at the door. The stranger at the door identifies himself as Tippy’s husband Richard (Timothy G. Dykes), and is obviously perturbed at her and Dr. Steve’s infidelity.
Tippy and Richard hold Dr. Steve prisoner in his own house, and Richard demands blackmail money for Steve’s night of infidelity, or he threatens to go to the police with a rape charge. Steve has no choice but to comply, and hopes that Tippy and Richard will soon take their money and leave him alone. But he cannot guess what other motivations these criminals may harbor, or what other more dangerous plots he might be drawn into.
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[Warning - Spoilers ahead!]
There are some great plot twists in the story that I didn’t see coming. First of all, the fact that Tippy admits that Richard is not her husband, but her father. This definitely (albeit momentarily) kills any sympathy the audience may have had for the rather sarcastic and congenial criminal.
In addition, we also learn that Dr. Steve was not a victim picked at random – years ago, Tippy had gotten pregnant, and her father took her to Dr. Steve to get an abortion. Because of a botched procedure, Tippy is now unable to have children, and is understandably angry at both her father and Dr. Steve. She now plans to use Dr. Steve as an accomplice in order to take revenge on her father, and Steve soon falls for her innocent victim act.
There are even more twists in the plot to keep the viewer guessing, but I’m not going to give them all away. Because only a little bit is revealed at a time, the audience is in almost the same place as Dr. Steve – wondering what is going on and what is going to happen next. However, while these plot twists keep the movie going quite well, I did notice a few places in the middle where it tended to drag by a bit. It might be a good idea to trim the final edit down a bit because, while it is important to give the audience a break from tension, that can easily be done with a funny line or a small joke. In a dramatic film like this, it would probably be better if the action continued at a much quicker pace.
Perhaps the best touch, however, was something almost unnoticeable. At the beginning of the movie, while Steve is in the club, Tippy can be seen in several different shots. But what the viewer may not notice is that Richard is at the club as well. This is something that wouldn’t even register in the audience’s mind until they went back and watched the film a second time. It’s not essential to the plot or even to the scene at the time, but this filmmaker’s attention to detail is very impressive!
