Movie "A Guilty Conscience"

[Pete Hanlin]

Last night, I was scanning the channels and saw an "old" movie with Anthony Hopkins starting up...

An Anthony Hopkins fan, I decided to watch it. One of the best Hopkins films I've ever seen! Turns out the movie was called "A Guilty Conscience," (1985) and starred Hopkins as a rich but shady lawyer whose wife wants a divorce and is blackmailing him for a large settlement. He spends the movie thinking up different ways to "dispose" of his wife (played by Blythe Danner) and tests his ideas by considering how a prosecuter would try him.

In the end, there is a rather ironic twist (which I won't divulge in case you have a chance to watch this fine movie), and the whole thing kept me interested the whole way through (which is a rare feat, especially since I believe this was orignially a "made for tv" movie!).

Anyone else seen this movie? I thought it was excellent! Maybe I'll have to break down and rent "Silence of the Lambs" yet!

[Darris Chambless]

Howdy Pete,

I felt kind of bad that no one had responded so I figured I'd throw in my verbiage :) I've not seen the movie you speak of, but I've seen a few that were very intresting with a similar plot. I wish I could remember the name of the show, but there was one that I thought was very well done. A man was trying to get rid of his wife to get an insurance settlement and to just get rid of her anyway.

This guy spent something like five years figuring out the final plan. In the beginning of all this he had his wife and himself get life insurrance policies for valid reasons so that it wouldn't look suspicious later on. He then spent the rest of the time figuring out his wifes habbits, over all health down to the smallest of details. The husband even took up hobbies that were ver diverse but each helped him set up the crime scene and build the murder weapon so that his wifes death looked completely accidental. He set up all his alibies years in advance, changed all his personal hygiene and grooming habbits and paid a lot of attention to all details about himself as well. I'll try to find the name of it and let you know because it was good show. This one had an interesting twist at the end as well regarding how he gets caught.

If you haven't seen "Silence Of The Lambs" yet I recommend you read the book instead of seeing the movie. Also read the book prior to it called either "The Man hunter" or "The Red Dragon" I believe, but can't remember now it's been so long. My dad has it and I'll find that out for you too. The books are mind trips. A good movie to see if you want a good mind trip is "Seven" if you haven't already seen it. That one will leave you a little uneasy.

Another good movie in my opinion was "Exorcist III" The first one was good for it's time but played more on special effects, the second one was a waist of time, but the third one is well worth watching although some of the acting is pretty bad. It's very cerebral.

And of course then there are the extremes of the spectrum which are the "Hell Raiser" series although I've only seen three of them (there are around 8 of them now I think) If you can get past the gore and pay attention to the actually story you find out that Clive Barker is one twisted individual. Of the three I've seen the first and second are good. The third one is kind of lame but it gives a little more history of the Sinobytes such as where they came from and why they are there.

Well I think I've covered a good bit of the movie spectrum for you :) We ought to start a little movie review here so we can all get some ideas of what was hot and what was not. I'll try to start one a little later, but first it's off to finish a Titan ;)

Take care,

Darris C.

[JRS]

I agree Darris - Silence of The Lambs' is a great book. Much better than the movie, although I liked the movie. And SEVEN was an excellent movie - good ending.

If you like historical fiction - try Bernard Cornwell. Either the Richard Sharpes series or his Aurthurian trilogy. And older book to read - if you are old enough to remember the 'cold war' and the Kennedy era, is "Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank.