Where Truth Lies

Plot synopsis:
In 1957, immediately after co-hosting a 39-hour-long polio telethon in a Miami television studio, entertainers Lanny Morris and Vince Collins fly north to open the new showroom of a New Jersey hotel run by mobster Sally Sanmarco, who has intimidated them into appearing in order to improve his own image. In their New Jersey hotel suite, shortly after their arrival, the nude body of Miami college student Maureen O'Flaherty is found in a bathtub.
Maureen, an aspiring journalist working for the summer as a server at the comedy team's Miami hotel (which is also owned by Sanmarco), had been researching an article for her school newspaper on the comedy team, and had interviewed them in Miami just before she disappeared. Police investigation in no way connects either Morris or Collins to Maureen's death, which is officially attributed to a drug overdose. Soon after her body is discovered, the two men's comedy partnership is dissolved, despite their enormous success and the closeness of their dependence on one another.
Many unanswered questions remain for the investigators of Maureen's death; the most confusing aspect is how Maureen's body made it from Miami to New Jersey at the same time the comedians were traveling.
Fifteen years later, journalist Karen O'Connor, who as a young polio survivor first met the duo at the same telethon portrayed in the movie's opening sequence, accepts a job to ghostwrite Vince Collins' autobiography—a deal from which Collins will earn $1 million, which he badly needs. Karen makes a promise to Mrs. O'Flaherty that she will find the truth of how her daughter Maureen died. The project is complicated by the fact that she keeps receiving anonymously sent chapters from a book that Lanny Morris himself has written.
Karen, who has idolized the comedians ever since first meeting them, encounters Morris, accompanied by his faithful valet Reuben and manager Irv, by chance in the first-class section of a flight, where she shares a dinner table with them. Wishing to keep her identity secret, during the meal she introduces herself as "Bonnie Trout," the name of the best friend with whom she has traded apartments. Morris and Karen hit it off and have sex in his hotel. He disappears the next morning, apparently without leaving her a note.
Under her own name, Karen begins to work on the Collins autobiography. Complications arise when Collins invites her to an all-day working session at his Los Angeles home and she learns that Morris will be joining them as well. Near panic ensues; she abruptly invents an excuse to leave, but meets Morris in the driveway, and her masquerade is revealed—Morris discovers she has lied about who she is, and Collins discovers that the woman helping him write his memoirs is having or has had an affair with his ex-partner.
Collins agrees to continue with the book, but creates a situation to blackmail Karen into staying away from the story of Maureen O'Flaherty, which is Karen's consuming interest. After plying Karen with wine and drugs, Collins manipulates her into having sex with a young aspiring singer named Alice. He photographs the two women in compromising positions. Karen is told that unless she tells the publisher that there is nothing odd or improper surrounding Maureen's death, he will make the pictures public.
Karen discovers that Maureen had secretly recorded her interactions with Morris and Collins. Gradually, it becomes clear what really happened that night 15 years before: the three had engaged in a ménage à trois, fueled by drugs and booze, and at some point Collins tried to have sex with Morris, who resisted violently. Collins retreated to his room, whereupon Maureen tried to blackmail Morris into paying to keep this information a secret. (In 1957, it would have finished Collins professionally if it had come out that he was bisexual.) Morris tried to bribe Maureen to stay quiet but she wanted more money than he was either willing or able to give. Collins passed out in his room, Morris in his, and Maureen fell asleep on the couch. In the morning, she was dead.
Fifteen years later, Karen has begun to uncover the story. She discovers more about Morris' "fix-it man," Reuben. While both Morris and Collins were convinced the other murdered Maureen, they smuggled her body in a crate full of lobsters (a gift from Sanmarco) with Reuben's assistance, shipping it ahead of them to the New Jersey hotel. The tape recorder was on during the entire night, but the tape has been missing all these years.
Reuben confesses to Karen that he murdered Maureen to protect his employers' reputations, and produces the tape to confirm his guilt. He asks Karen if her publishing company will pay him, say, $1 million for the tape. Karen puts two and two together and realizes that Reuben was blackmailing Collins, demanding $1 million to keep quiet his bisexuality, proven on the tape, and perhaps his having murdered Maureen. (Collins was so drunk and drugged during that episode that he plainly does not remember what happened.) Reuben was demanding a million dollars for a murder he himself committed.
In the end, Collins is indeed destroyed, committing suicide. Morris is furious at Karen for all that she has set in motion, and Karen has the answer to her mystery. She goes to Mrs. O'Flaherty, saying she will publish the truth but only after an innocent bystander has died—referring to Maureen's mother herself, who would be crushed to learn of her daughter's behavior that contributed to her own death.

Tags: insanity, murder

Review:
Poor Execution of a Promising Storyline.
After the death of his beloved wife Wendy (Candice Daly), the psychologist Dr. Ian Lazarre (John Savage) becomes alcoholic.
His second wife Teresa Lazarre has just left him but together with his lawyer and best friend Joe McNamara (Eric Pierpoint), they convince Ian to go to rehab.
They bring him to the Blackhurst Institute, where Dr. Vernon Renquist (Malcolm McDowell) submits Ian to an experimental treatment with the support of the nurses Racquel Chambers (Kim Cattrall) and the strong James (Sam J.
Jones).
However Ian becomes aggressive and delusional, and believes Dr. Renquist is damaging his brain with the medication and Teresa is cheating him with Joe. Is Ian right or becoming deranged?"Where Truth Lies" is an intriguing film with a promising storyline but poorly executed.
Kim Cattrall is lost in the role of a sexy nurse and the screenplay is a total mess and unintentionally ambiguous.
In the end, the viewer does not know exactly what happened to Wendy and Teresa.
My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "A Marca da Traição" ("The Mark of the Betrayal").
Mind Games.
(There are Spoilers) Living with the tragic death of his first wife Wendy, Candice Daly, psychiatrist Dr. Ian Lazzare, John Savage, can't keep her out of his mind even after re-marrying a woman who's an exact replica of Wendy Teresa also Candice Daly with her blond hair colored black.Becoming a hopeless alcoholic Dr. Lazarre drinking become so acute that Teresa leaves him and that leads to Dr. Lazarre attempting to kill himself.
Committed to the Blackhurst Instatute by Teresa and Dr. Lazarre's friend and personal lawyer John McNamra, Eric Pierpoint, Dr. Lazarre is put on drugs and kept from getting any sleep to shock him out of his drinking problems.
But as we, and Dr. Lazare, also see his treatment has nothing at all to do with curing him but experimenting with his mind, or what's left of it, to see what make him tick with the experiments being conducted by the head of the institute the weird Dr. Vernon Requist, Malcolm McDowell.You have trouble with understanding the movie "Where Truth Lies" right from the start with Wendy's accident that later in the film turns out to be her murder.
There's also this convict was treated by Dr. Lazarr who seemed to have later been executed a Jonas Keller, Denis Forest, who keeps popping up in the movie as if he were Dr. Lazarre's conscience or alter-ego.
You at first think that Keller was the real reason for Wendy's death but it turns out that he had nothing to do with it so why is he made to be so important in the film not only in regard to Wendy's murder but to Dr. Lazarre himself?At the Blackhurst Institute were at first given the impression that Dr. Renquist and his head nurse Racquel Cambers, Kim Cattrall, are not what they seem to be.
It's even indicted that Nurse Chambers is a junkie that Dr. Renquist experimented with like he's doing with Dr. Lzarre.
But as the movie moves to it's surprising conclusion it obvious that all that information we get from the movie makers of "Where truth Lies" are red herrings to throw us off what's really going on and why Dr. Lazarre was committed in the institute in the first place.The big surprise in the movie is not that surprising at all since we get a good idea to who's behind Dr. Lazarre's interment and what the reasons are for it is.
Which Dr. Lazarre himself realizes but after it's too late for him to stop the person from murdering his second wife Teresa like he did his first wife Wendy.
Very depressing ending where the killer gets poor Dr. Lazarre implicated in Wendy's murder only after he himself is killed by an outraged Dr. Lazarre, who earlier escaped from the Blackhurst institute, only to end up being committed for life to a mental hospital for the criminally insane.
Passable thriller with John Savage doing his best as a man being driven over the edge in order to cure him of an mental illness that he only got from being institutionalized to cure it when he didn't have it in the first place..
Don't underestimate this movie..
I actually liked this movie although the other reviewers on here seems to hate it.
It's a very interesting story on many levels, is john savages character really ill or is he being framed?
Will he be able to get out of that hell-hole?
Is he imagining the things he sees?
What if this hadn't been a low budget tv-movie?, with a bigger budget, some editing here and there and some bigger stars perhaps?
(except savage and mcdowell which are good in this movie) then this movie could be a masterpiece since the story is very interesting.
The story reminded me a bit of "the fugitive" although this is a totally different movie.
I liked the ending although it's very sad..
His Brain Was Bothering HIM !.
Found this film a complete spinner with flashbacks almost as soon as the picture begins.
John Savage loses his wife in a horrible car accident with a truck and dives off a cliff and explodes.
However, for some reason, John Savage begins to have dreams about his wife and this accident plays over and over again in his brain and it drives him crazy.
Savage completely looses self control and winds up in a rehabilitation center where the head doctor treats his patients like animals in a cage.
John Savage does have a very sexy nurse to take care of him and he has wild dreams about making love with her, so he is not completely nuts.
If you like something to spin your own brain, watch this film and you will feel like you are in the SPIN ZONE and I forgot, the ending will blow your mind completely AWAY !.
If There Is Only One Movie You Miss This Year....
I thought the first 15 minutes of this mind-numbing psychiatric ward "torture de force" was the worse thing in the film...
until the movie continued.
By the middle of the film, the writer and the director hit rock bottom.
But to my amazement, the crew took out pick-axes and shovels to reach new depths.The basic plot revolves around an alcoholic psychiatrist obsessed with his first wife's death.
The poor soul is soon institutionalized, by his best friend and second wife, in some sort of experimental mental institution run by the medically curious.
It is here that our protagonist realizes the hidden truths...
or does he?The movie tries to be an intense psychological thriller with surprising plot twists.
Instead, the film is a droning exploration of lackluster montages with as many surprises as your granny's navy bean soup!
Save your four dollar rental fee for a Keanu Reeves movie, at least you know what to expect.
And if this gem happens to be on cable...
cancel your subscription immediately..
Questions that go unasked and unanswered.
This is an awful film but it does have the outlines of a plot that Hitchcock or someone with talent would have made into an excellent film.
No one here seems to have noticed the odd choice made by someone connected with this film to use parts of the magnificent Mozart Mass in C Minor as background to torture scenes in a mental hospital.
(It's strange that no one here seems to have noticed the beautiful music.) As it is the film seems almost comic.Kim Cattrall's character is completely ridiculous (although not impossible in a mental hospital setting...)The cast was capable of good work..I wonder how much they knew about the film when they signed their contracts.
I wonder why anyone was willing to produce it.
It's sad..It could have been a good film..
Awful.
How did they get John Savage and Malcolm McDowell to be a part of this mess?A poor excuse for a story, lousy editing...
well, basically, lousy everything.
Usually, when I see a movie, no matter how bad, there's always one or two moments, or one or two elements, that make it worth the while.
There's absolutely nothing new in this movie, and all those familiar elements are put together badly - or should I say, not put together, rather jumbled into one big soulless mess.Don't waste your time.
It's bad, but not bad enough, I'm afraid, to make even me laugh.
No redeeming qualities whatsoever..
I watched this movie on a whim and boy was it lousy.
The dialogue was flat, the characters were plastic, the plot was implausible and disjointed.
This was a total waste of time.
Kim Catrall, and Malcolm McDowell must be kicking themselves for doing this movie.
Some of the dream sequences were interesting, but John Savage, the main character psychoanalyst, is a very weak leading man.
I wonder if he ever was in a good movie.
Even the murderer villain looks more like Fabio than a twisted killer.
The hospital guard was laughable.
This lummox obviously never acted before, nor would I ever believe that he could pass any exam needed to work in a mental hospital..
Where does truth lie?
(pun intended).
This movie is not as bad as it seems.
This movie is not as bad as it seems.
First of all, I'm a big John Savage fan, so I guess you could say I watched it for his performance alone, which was very good.
Also (and I think most men would agree) Kim Catrall is easy on the eyes.
Plus, being a big Sex & the City fan, I wanted to see her in a movie.
Malcom McDowell is a nice touch as the doctor.The story as you may have already gathered, is about a psychiatrist who has a drinking problem due to the tragic death of his first wife in a car accident.
When he attempts to take his own life, his best friend & lawyer - as well as his current but estranged wife, decide to commit him to a psychiatric institute where they use controversial techniques.Without giving too much away, the movie attempts to kinda explore the hidden feelings & subconscious memories that we all hide in an effort to run from ourselves and our troubles.
Is this the best movie on that topic I've ever seen?
No, is it worthy of viewing?
Yes. I would even be tempted to watch it again to see what I may have missed.
There are some definitely subtleties here.Really a 6.5 out of 10, but hey, I wanted to help the overall rating!
Don't take this movie too seriously, it's a thriller with a twist at the end.
Just enjoy the ride.