Dennis Franz

In Los Angeles, Seth (Nicolas Cage) is one of many angels who watch over humans and protect them in unseen ways. Seth's main responsibility is to appear to those who are close to death and guide them to the next life. As part of this task, Seth and one of his fellow angels, Cassiel (Andre Braugher), like to ask people what their favorite thing in life was. But despite their daily encounters, they appear to have trouble understanding human beings and their ways. While waiting to escort to the other world a man who will not survive heart surgery, Seth is impressed by the vigorous efforts of the surgeon, Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan), to save the ill-fated man's life and her sincere anguish at her failure to do so. Seth soon becomes preoccupied with Maggie and decides to become visible to her despite his obvious inability to give her many convincing details about himself, such as what he does for a living or even his last name. Despite this, they develop a friendship which soon turns to mutual attraction, although Maggie is already involved with one of her colleagues, Jordan Ferris (Colm Feore), at the hospital. Seth then meets Nathaniel Messinger (Dennis Franz), one of Maggie's patients, who can sense Seth's presence and that of other angels. Nathaniel soon relates to Seth that he, too, had once been an angel but, by way of the free will granted to angels, decided to become human through the process he refers to as "falling". Seth begins to consider exercising this option so that he can be with Maggie in a fully physical and emotional relationship. When Maggie receives a marriage proposal from Jordan, she finds herself having to choose between him and Seth. Having realized that Seth is impervious to injury, Maggie finally confronts him and demands to know who or what he really is, but she is unable to accept the revelation and sends him away. Maggie later talks about Seth with Nathaniel who gradually reveals his own angelic origin. He explains to her why he himself chose to become human and points out that Seth is thinking of doing the same. Seth decides to become human through the symbolic gesture of jumping from the top of a skyscraper. Immediately upon awakening from the jump, he starts to experience all of the human feelings and sensations that he had never been able to understand, beginning with physical injury and pain. Up until this point, Seth's personality and emotions, like those of all the other angels, have been very subdued, but that starts to change. Now human, Seth has to find his way to the hospital to see Maggie, but he is told that she has gone to her uncle's mountain cabin for a break. Penniless and naive, he cannot pay for the journey and ends up getting mugged and having his boots taken from his feet by a gang of roving predators. He eventually hitches a ride to Lake Tahoe and appears, soaked and cold, at Maggie's doorstep. Seeing the split lip and condensed breath coming from his mouth in the cold air, Maggie realizes that he has given up his exalted status for her love. She sees to his wounds and then they enjoy warm, passionate lovemaking at last. The next morning, as Seth is in the shower, enjoying his first sensation of running hot water on his body, Maggie rides her bike to a local store to buy some pears for him. On her way back, happy and fulfilled, she rides her bike with her eyes closed and her arms wide open to the Autumn sunlight and her bright future with Seth. Her happiness is cut short by a truck that catches her by surprise when it pulls out in front of her. Seth senses that Maggie is in trouble and runs to her aid. He arrives in time for Maggie to tell him that she sees the angel who has come to escort her away. Although Seth is no longer able to see the angels, he knows they are there and begs Maggie not to look at them. Maggie tells him that she is not afraid anymore and that when they will ask her what her favorite thing in life used to be, she will say it was Seth. Now grieving and alone, Seth is visited by his former colleague and friend, the angel Cassiel. Cassiel offers comfort and asks Seth if he knew this would happen, would he still decide to become human. Seth answers: " I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One. " Seth mourns for Maggie and begins a difficult adjustment to his new life. The final scene recalls an earlier one with Nathaniel. It shows Seth at the beach where the angels meet every day at dawn to listen to the celestial music. With Cassiel and the rest of the angels watching, Seth expresses his joy in being human and the fact that he has come to terms with his new life by running into the water and playing in the waves. In a rare moment of emotion, Cassiel is seen laughing joyfully for his old friend.

Experienced Green Beret sergeant Johnny Gallagher is escorting a prisoner, Airborne Ranger Thomas Boyette, back to the US, but Boyette escapes and Gallagher must risk life and limb to catch him. Johnny Gallagher, a sergeant, is sent from Germany with a prisoner. The prisoner escapes from the men's room at National Airport and Hackman begins his search for his man. Enlisting the help of his ex-wife and various old friends, he finds that the prisoner is part of a plot by senior military personnel on both sides to kill a very high-ranking world figure in order to sabotage arms control talks.

While house-sitting a luxurious apartment, Jake Scully begins an obsessive surveillance of a woman in a neighboring house which eventually gets him involved in a grisly murder.

Norman Bates is given a clean chit and is released from the mental institution where he was recuperating. He goes back to his motel where memories of his mother begin to haunt him.

"Blow Out" opens with the first-person viewpoint of a psycho killer prowling a female dormitory. After spying through the windows at young ladies in various stages of undress and sexual activity, the killer attacks a nude woman taking a shower. She opens her mouth and emits a ridiculous sounding scream that deflates the entire scene. We then realize we've been watching the current film that sound engineer Jack Terry (John Travolta) has been working on. His employer, a producer of low budget horror films, orders him to find a new scream for the crucial moment of this scene. That night, Jack is standing on a bridge recording ambient sounds in a quiet park near a lake when suddenly an approaching car has a tire blow out, causing it to skid off the roadway into the water. Jack immediately dives in to help, not noticing a figure dressed in black emerging from underneath the bridge. The figure escapes while Jack tries to rescue the inhabitants of the car. Underneath the water, he finds the body of the man who was driving the car, now dead. His passenger is a young woman who is still very much alive, and Jack pulls the unconscious woman out of the wreck. Jack takes the girl to a hospital, where he learns the shocking details of what he has witnessed: the driver of the car was the governor, McRyan, who was a presidential hopeful. Detective Mackey questions Jack about the accident, and an advisor of McRyan's, Lawrence Henry, shows up at the hospital, asking Jack to forget he ever saw the girl in the car. McRyan, who was married, was apparently having some sort of illicit affair with her, and the news of her presence in the car would have caused scandal for the dead governor. Jack talks to the girl, whose name is Sally (Nancy Allen). Sally seems confused about what happened, and when the hospital cuts her loose, Jack offers to take her home. Sally instead has him take her to a motel, where Jack watches over her while she sleeps. He listens to the recording he made in the park before the accident; his equipment was running and he caught the entire incident on an audio tape. Jack is positive he hears a gunshot before the tire blows out. Meanwhile, in a dark garage after hours, a man slips into the storage area where the governor's car is being held, and swaps the shot-out tire with another. The next day, Jack wants to talk to Sally about the accident, but Sally is evasive about what she was doing with the governor that night, and she leaves in a hurry. A man emerges in the media claiming to have film footage of the accident; Manny Karp (Dennis Franz) sells his film to a magazine, and Jack buys a copy. The magazine has run a series of frames that Jack cuts apart and assembles into a crude home movie, using his own sound recording as the audio track. He sees the gunshot appear in conjunction with the sound effect, and for him, this is irrefutable proof that the accident was actually an assassination. Jack calls Sally and finds out that she's attempting to leave town; he intercepts her at the bus station and buys her a drink in the lounge in order to stall her. She reveals that Lawrence Henry gave her money to leave town for a few months. He learns that Sally has aspirations of being a makeup artist, although she struggles to support herself with low paying clerk's position. When Sally questions him about his own background, Jack reveals something painful from his past: he once worked with the police department placing a hidden recording device on an undercover informant. The incident ended horribly when the wire overheated and revealed the man as an informant, resulting in his murder. Jack is determined to prove that McRyan's death was an assassination, and he asks Sally to stay in order to help him unravel the mystery. The same man who erased the evidence of McRyan's blow out reappears, stalking a woman who appears to be Sally. He kills the woman, realizing too late that she is not Sally. Confused and upset about the implications of his mistake, he disfigures the woman's body in order to make it look like a sex crime. Through a series of phone calls, it becomes clear that this man, whose name is Burke (John Lithgow), has been hired by McRyan's political rival to stage the entire incident. However, Burke is a psychopath who takes it upon himself to disobey orders and shoot out McRyan's tire, causing the accident that resulted in his death. All he was hired to do was disgrace McRyan by taking incriminating photographs, something ties in to Manny Karp. It seems as if Karp and Sally are in cahoots with one another; together, they work as a team. Sally seduces important men, and Karp arrives to photograph them in compromising positions, at which point Sally disappears and Karp sells his photographs for profit to the highest bidder (either the victim or the victim's enemies). Jack is shocked to discover that Sally was involved in such an operation, as she seems so sweet and naive. Jack visits Mackey to reveal his suspicions about the so-called accident, but Mackey isn't interested, dismissing Jack as a crackpot with a conspiracy theory, but Jack leaves him a copy of his tape of the accident. Burke reveals to his co-conspirators that he intends to tie up all loose ends; he has erased all of Jack's audio tapes, and he intends to murder Sally, hence the reason why he attacked and killed the woman who was unfortunate enough to be her lookalike. Burke's associate disowns him, but Burke continues to act on his own, bugging Jack's phone. Jack discovers that all of his tapes have been erased, and Mackey calls him, furious that the tape he's been given is blank. Any shred of credibility with Jack had with Mackey is now gone. However, Jack is approached by a well-known TV reporter, Donahue (Curt May), who wants to put him on his high profile talk show. Jack and Sally have obtained Manny Karp's original film of the accident, which clearly demonstrates that the tire was shot out, especially when synchronized with Jack's audio recording. Donahue wants Jack to play the film on the air and discuss his experience. Unbeknownst to Jack, Burke has tapped his phone and he eavesdrops on Jack's conversations with Donahue. Burke himself calls Sally, posing as Donahue, and asks her to meet him and show him the film. Sally visits Jack because Burke has disabled his phone, making it appear busy. Jack is immediately suspicious of why Donahue would ask to meet Sally, not to mention how Donahue could have gotten Sally's phone number. Perhaps due to his desire to get Sally involved in Donahue's story, Jack agrees to let her go and meet Donahue, but only if she's wired so he can listen in on their conversation and record it as evidence. Sally agrees to meet Donahue, and Jack wires her with a listening device. Posing as Donahue, Burke has summoned Sally to the 30th Street station, and while he waits for her, he murders another woman in the public restroom, apparently planning on making Sally's murder look like the work of a serial killer. Sally parts with Jack and goes to maker her meeting, but as soon as Jack hears Burke's voice, he realizes it's not Donahue, and rushes to intercept Sally. Burke ushers Sally down into a subway and takes her to another location, with Jack listening in and trying to follow them based on audio clues. Jack loses track of Sally and panics, driving his jeep into the middle of an Independence Day parade. He crashes the jeep, and when he comes to, he can hear Sally is in danger. Burke has taken her to a nearby rooftop and secured the tape from her, immediately destroying it. Confused, Sally realizes too late she is in danger; Burke attacks her as Jack tries to reach them. He finally catches sight of Sally when she breaks away from Burke, leaning over the rooftop and emitting a terrifying scream as they make eye contact at a distance. Jack rushes up to save her, but he is too late; Burke has already killed her. Jack takes Burke by surprise, stabbing him with his own weapon, but he is anguished over the fact that Sally is dead. The denouement finds Jack now utterly despondent and broken over Sally's death, obsessed with the audio recording he made of her in the moments before her murder. In a morbid finish, Jack uses Sally's death scream as the audio in the cheap horror movie he has been working on, both Jack and his producer agree that the scream is perfect.

Sensual images of a couple, a man and a woman, making love in the shower. He (Robbie L. McDermott) suddenly attacks her. Cut to a couple making love in bed. It looks like she was the woman who was remembering the shower scene. When he finishes, she doesn't seem to be much satisfied. The radio is on. The woman is named Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson). She tells off her son Peter "Pete" Miller (Keith Gordon) because he doesn't want to go to the museum with her: he prefers to stay home working on an improved computer which can count binary numbers up to 20 digits. It looks like Kate's partner, Mike (Fred Weber) is not Pete's father. Kate leaves home to see her psychiatrist, Doctor Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), who has to perform the duties of receptionist as Mary is on a holiday. Kate complains about the "surprise" visit of her mother from Florida due to her approaching birthday. She also complains about Mike's "specialties". She is fed up with her husband and mother, but she doesn't say anything to the right person. Elliott tells her not to get angry with him but with Mike and tell him that he's bad in bed. She questions Elliott whether he finds her attractive or not. He admits that he finds her attractive but he also says that he's married and doesn't want to put his marriage in danger. Kate says she isn't sure whether putting his own marriage with Mike at risk would be worthwhile. Later, Kate is at the museum. A man sits next to her. She leaves a glove for him. They follow each other around the museum. She loses his sight, so she has an expression which says "obviously, he wasn't serious about me", but when he turns around he's there, staring at him. She seems to panick for a second and then is happy that he's not there. But he appears again, on her back, touching her with her own glove. When she realises she's lost it, she tries to find it, and then she realises he's got it. Music in innuendo while she tries to find him. When she leaves the museum, she sees his hand showing the glove from a yellow cab. She smiles and tells him politely "thank you for retrieving my missing glove", but he pulls her inside. They make love while the taxi driver (Sean O'Rinn) looks at them through the inside mirror. She has a noisy orgasm. They arrive to his destination, his apartment. She stays with him through the afternoon. When she is about to leave, she finds papers stating that he's suffering from a sexually-transmitted disease, and that she will have probably caught it. She leaves. When she is in the lift, she is so nervous that she caresses her hands one against the other. Then, she realises that she's forgotten her wedding ring in the apartment of the man. She has to go to the flat again, but when she gets to the right floor, another blond woman - probably using a wig - with dark sunglasses stabs her with a straight razor. Kate is left for dead, all bloodied. Another couple of people has called the lift: they are discussing the convenience of buying the shares of a particular company. He runs away, but Elizabeth "Liz" Blake (Nancy Allen) stares at him. When she looks inside the lift, Kate is still alive. They try to reach out for each other's hand, while the doors of the lift are slowly closing down. In the last second, Liz stares up and in the reflection of the mirror she sees the blonde-wigged woman who is about to cut her hand as well. She backs up. A cleaning lady (Amalie Collier) appears, and she shouts when she looks at Liz with the razor menacingly held by her hand. Elliott finds an answering machine left for a man (William Finlay) saying that there is a woman trying to het out of his body. He's worried, because the man has also admitted to stealing a straight razor from the cabinet of his office. Detective Marino (Dennis Franz) questions Elliott, who gets very defensive but doesn't mention the answering machine message. Meanwhile, Liz is waiting to be questioned as well and Pete is listening to the whole conversation. Marino mentions that the man, Warren Lockman (Ken Baker) was recognised by the taxi driver. Mike picks Pete up. Marino questions Liz about what she was doing in the building. She says she was with a married man. She is a prostitute. Marino suspects of her: nobody saw the blonde woman and her fingerprints are on the weapon. The man, Ted (Norman Evans), is from out of the city, and Marino tells Liz that she is the only interested person in finding Ted. When Liz leaves, Pete is also stuck with a man he doesn't love at all - his true father died during the 'Nam war. He tries to investigate the case as well. In his blue moped, he follows Liz all over the city. He arranges a camera to be hidden inside the box at the back of the bike. While he watches Liz, the mysterious man has phoned Elliott again, threatening her. Liz tries to stay home, but she needs the money to invest in the company which Ted had recommended, so she asks for 500 dollars to meet a client, Cleveland Sam (Brandon Maggart), in the room 331. She leaves a bit distraught. She jumps onto a taxi but realises that somebody is following her. She asks the young taxi driver (Bill Randolph) to lose the follower. The taxi driver wants to meet her for dinner. The taxi driver tries to help Liz: she opens the door of the taxi when the blonde lady is following Liz. Liz runs to the underground, but when she tries to leave another blonde transsexual or travesty scares her off. Liz approaches some black men (Robert Lee Rush, Anthony Boyd Scriven, Robert McDuffie and Frederick Sanders) who are listening to the radio, but one of them, called Sonny, threatens her as the train arrives. Liz tells the police officer (Samm-Art Williams), who ends up thinking she is making it all up, because he can't see any gang threatening to "cut her up", and Liz's claims that a blonde is following her leave the officer even more convinced that she's mad. In the next station, the police officer leaves. When the doors close, the gang appears again, just causing a nuisance to all passengers. Liz runs from them and closes one door behind. At that moment, the blonde woman puts a hand on her mouth and wants to slash her with another straight razor. Fortunately, Pete saves Liz using an anti-rape spray of his invention. Liz invites him over. Pete sleeps at Liz's, and she promises that he won't tell anyone that he's not studying French with at his friend Paul's. Liz tells him that she knows that the blonde woman left the doctor's office, but she can't explain how she knows it. As Marino can't get a register order like that, he suggests her to enter Elliott's office and check the doctor's agenda. Dr. Levy (David Margulies) tells Elliott that one of her patients Bobby / Bobbi (William Finlay) has stopped seeing him because he didn't approve of his sex change. Elliott tells Levy that Bobbi must be the murderer of the lady in the lift, and they also comment on the missing razor. Later, Liz pretends to be a new patient of dr Elliott. She tells him about an erotic dream of her, but also admits that she's a prostitute, although she sometimes makes love to men for pleasure. She gets naked trying to seduce him. During all this time, Pete is watching with some lens. Liz checks the address book of dr Elliott and she thinks that the name she's looking for is Chris Clemens. Pete tries to to tell her that the blonde woman is inside the office - he's seen it - but a blonde woman has attacked him, so when he finally can cry out to Liz the blonde woman is already prepared to slash her with a Straight Razor. At that moment, the blonde woman who is holding Pete down shoots Bobbi. The wig falls off. The blonde woman is a wounded man. It's the doctor Robert Elliott. Some time later, Levy, Marino, Pete and Liz are sitting down. Levy explains that Elliott had a double personality: he was the masculine doctor but he was also a patient who wanted to have a sex change performed, and giving Bobbi as his name, he visited doctor Levy. Levy says that Elliott represent Bobbi, but that when Bobbi decided to go for the sex change surgery, that pushed him to act. Levy said that every time that doctor Elliott felt attracted by a woman her alter-ego killed that woman. The blonde woman who attacked Pete was police officer Betty Luke (Susanna Clemm), who was in charge of following Liz. Marino pushed her to enter dr Elliott's address book because he didn't have any proofs against him. Liz explains to Pete how a sex change operation takes place. He replies, sitting confortably at a restaurant with her, that he may change the subject of his investigation, and use himself as the subject of that sex change, instead of investigating about computers. Meanwhile, back at a madhouse, a nurse (Anneka di Lorenzo) walks in to give Dr Elliott the medicine he must take. He looks defenseless and sleepy, but he jumps and strangles her. All the loose madmen cheer. Pete invites her to sleep at his home, saying that his step-father won't mind. Naked in the shower, Liz feels some danger. Somebody dressed as a nurse approaches, and she knows it. She doesn't have anything to defend herself in the bathroom, except for something in the medicine cabinet. However, suddenly, the razor is at Liz's neck. The same blonde woman cuts Liz's neck. Terrified, Liz wakes up in a bedroom at Pete's. He tries to calm her down. FADE TO BLACK