Kyle T. Heffner

This is a live action adaptation from The novel by Hans Christian Andersen about a teenager, Two brothers and a shy girl This movie is a combination of the fairy tales we all know including hansel and gretel, beauty and the beast and the sleeping beauty. The story tells how each of our protagonists have a dark past and are cursed to be exiled to the wonderland where they will have 3 half nights to purify their soul, otherwise they will be sentenced to become a spawn of evil or They will regret what they love most.

The story follows the escape of two men from an Alaska prison, the efforts of a train dispatching office to safely stop the out-of-control train they are on, and the hunt by their warden to recapture them. Oscar "Manny" Manheim (Jon Voight) is a ruthless bank robber and hero to the convicts of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. After two previous escape attempts the doors to Manny's cell have been welded shut for three years. A court order compels Manny's nemesis, the vindictive Associate Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan), to release him back into the general prison population. Manny immediately sets his next escape plan into action. Buck (Eric Roberts) is another convict (convicted of statutory rape) who, due to his position in the prison's laundry room, is recruited to smuggle Manny out in a laundry trolley. Naive and unintelligent, Buck decides to escape with Manny, who doesn't care for company. After a freezing cross-country hike (involving a 300 ft drop into a river and subsequent swim) the two hop on board a train consisting of four locomotives at a remote Alaskan rail yard. Just as the train is set in motion, the elderly engineer suffers a heart attack. In attempting to stop the train and get off, the engineer does not close the throttle, instead pulling on the conductor's emergency brake lever, before collapsing off the still-moving train. Consequently, although the brakes apply, the locomotives overpower them, and the brake shoes burn off, making it now impossible to stop the train. Neither the two convicts nor the only railway worker left on the train, a locomotive hostler named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay), are aware of their situation (the convicts due to taking refuge inside the fourth car's toilet compartment, Sara due to being asleep in the second car). As the train accelerates, dispatcher Frank Barstow (Kyle T. Heffner) is alerted to the situation. Unaware of the failure of the brakes, Barstow authorises employees to allow the runaway out onto the main-line, arrogantly insisting that a computer-controlled signalling system of his creation will trigger a brake application on the locomotives. The last of the brake-shoes burn out and the dispatchers realise the severity of their situation, forcing them to keep the tracks clear. The runaway collides with the tail-end of a freight train that was in the act of moving out of its path. Learning that the train's excessive speed will most likely collapse an elderly trestle ahead, Barstow's superior orders him to derail it, believing that no one alive is on board. Upon doing so, the signal maintainer hears the whistle. Realising someone is indeed alive on the train, Barstow orders a reversal of the switch. The speeding train continues onwards towards the aging Seneca trestle, where emergency workers are gathering in expectation of a disaster. Warden Ranken concludes that his two escaped convicts are escaping by rail. Meanwhile, the two fugitives have found Sara on board when she climbs back to the fourth engine in the belief she'll be safer in a possible collision at the rear. Now aware the engineer must be dead, the three must get to the lead engine so they can press its emergency fuel cutoff switch. Sara informs them that they can't because the second locomotive is a streamlined F-unit with no forward catwalk. Its nose door, which would normally allow access to the lead engine, is jammed. At her suggestion, they are able to slow the train by disconnecting the electrical bus link cables supplying commands to the two rear locomotives, shutting them down. Unintentionally, this slows the train enough that it is able to safely cross the Seneca trestle. The dispatchers divert the runaway onto a branch after determining it only five minutes away from a head-on collision with a passenger train. This is only a brief respite, as further ahead the branch negotiates a tight curve adjacent to a chemical plant. Even at its reduced speed, the runaway is likely to derail on this curve and trigger a major chemical spill. His hand forced by his superiors, Barstow agrees that they must switch the runaway onto a stub-ended siding and crash it, thus sending the three people on the train to almost certain death, rather than risk a catastrophic chemical explosion. Warden Ranken refuses to wait, coercing Barstow's assistance in chasing down the train by prison helicopter. Manny shows an increasingly violent streak, repeatedly asserting his dominance over Buck. He eventually forces Buck to attempt a suicidal scramble around the outside of the second engine's nose (Buck already having tried once and failed). Sara's intervention on Buck's behalf forces an armed face-off between the two convicts. Emotionally broken, all three slump into a fatalistic depression, only broken when Ranken's helicopter catches up with the train. Spurred on by the appearance of his arch-foe, and resolved not to return to prison, even if it means his own death, Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine. There, after a struggle with Ranken (who has successfully boarded by helicopter), he handcuffs Ranken inside the cab. To the music of the second movement of Vivaldi's Gloria in D (Et In Terra Pax), Manny then uncouples the first engine from the rest of the train, leaving Buck and Sara safely behind. He refuses to stop the lead engine despite Buck's screamed pleas. With Ranken his prisoner now, Manny climbs onto the roof of the lone engine in the freezing cold and blowing snow, his arms stretched out in a cruciform shape, ready to meet his end. After a series of cross-cuts of Buck and Manny's fellow inmates mourning in their cells at Stonehaven, the film fades to white and closes with an on-screen quote from William Shakespeare's Richard III:- "No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast."

In San Francisco, CA, Theodore "Teddy" Pierce (Gene Wilder), director of information at an advertising agency, stands outside a high window ledge and thinks back to four weeks ago when his boring, but comfortable life suddenly changed: As Teddy parks his car in the underground garage at work, Teddy sees a beautiful woman in a red dress (Kelly Le Brock) and instantly becomes infatuated when she deliberately stands over an air vent, letting her dress billow up. A happily married man, Teddy was never interested in staring at pretty women, until now. At his office, he sees the "woman in red" again, waiting at the desk of his colleague, Ms. Milner (Gilda Radner), and telephones the extension to try and speak with her. The woman stands up as if she is reaching for the phone, but Milner returns and answers the call. However, Teddy, whose view of the desk is now blocked, mistakenly believes he is speaking to the woman in red and asks her to meet him that night at an Italian restaurant in North Beach. Milner, a plain-looking woman, recognizes Teddy's voice and is surprised by the invitation, but accepts. In need of an excuse to leave the house without arousing his wife Didi's (Judith Ivey) suspicions, Teddy asks his friend Michael (Michael Huddleston) to call him at home at exactly 8:15 p.m. and pretend to be his assistant, requiring immediate help at the office. Meanwhile, Teddy's philandering friend, Joe (Joseph Bologna), has been caught cheating by his wife Theresa, who moves out of their house with all the furniture. Didi calls Joe a "rat" and tells Teddy she would go crazy if Teddy ever had an affair. She also mentions that Joe tried an old trick by asking his secretary to call home one night to summon him for last-minute work at the office. When Michael telephones at 8:15 p.m., Teddy is now too nervous and abandons the scheme. Meanwhile, Ms. Milner waits for Teddy at the Italian restaurant in North Beach, until the place closes. When she sees Teddy arrive at work the next day, she vandalizes his car and gives him a hard, angry stare throughout the day. Later, Milner telephones Teddy and says she will give him another chance, but he is under the impression that the woman in red is calling. She asks him to meet her at a bar later that day, but when he arrives and sees Milner, he hastily leaves. Milner takes revenge for the rejection by continuing to vandalize Teddy's car. At a staff meeting, Teddy learns that the woman in red is the fashion model for the new cable car campaign and was discovered by the head of the advertising agency horseback riding in Golden Gate Park. After repeated visits to the park where he struggles to ride a horse, Teddy finally encounters the woman. Although she appears confused by his apology for leaving her at the restaurant, she is impressed by his gallantry and charm. A few days later, the woman in red arrives at the advertising agency to give Teddy an earring he dropped on the horse trail. He pretends that he does not recognize the jewelry, which belongs to his wife, and convinces the woman in red (who finally introduces herself as Charlotte) to meet him for dinner the following night. After Teddy anxiously prepares for the date, Charlotte telephones at the last minute to say that she has to travel to Los Angeles for work and asks him to meet her there. Teddy arranges for a fake telegram to be sent to his home, requesting him to immediately fly to San Diego for a conference. In Didi's presence, he yells and pretends he does want to leave his wife and family, as she urges him to quit acting childish and go. Teddy is stunned when his Los Angeles flight is rerouted to San Diego due to bad weather. Although he spends the night in the airport, he appreciates that his life now has "adventure." Returning to San Francisco, Teddy is relieved when Charlotte telephones and meets him for a walk. Meanwhile, Theresa has forgiven Joe for his infidelity, and Ms. Milner had received a makeover and flirts with Teddy's assistant, Richard. On their first date, Teddy asks Charlotte if they can briefly drop by to see his grandmother, "Mama Dell," and wish her a happy birthday. Buddy (Charles Grodin), another one of Teddy's friends, offers to chauffeur the couple for the evening since Teddy's car remains a wreck. When they arrive at the apartment, Teddy is shocked to see his entire family there as a surprise for his birthday, which is the following day. As Didi looks at Charlotte with curiosity, Buddy quickly rescues the situation and introduces Charlotte as his "sweetheart." Buddy and Charlotte leave the surprise party, while Teddy remains with his family. Later that evening, Joe, Michael, and Buddy, sneak Teddy away and take him to a rendezvous with Charlotte. After watching Charlotte pose for an all-night fashion shoot, Teddy returns with her to her apartment building. She tells him that despite his wife, two daughters, and poor horseback riding, she wants to be with him. After they undress, climb into bed and prepare to have sex for the first time, Charlotte's husband unexpectedly rings the intercom. Shocked that Charlotte is married, Teddy asks why she never told him that she was married when he told Charlotte that he was married, and Charlotte replies that he "never asked". Teddy puts on a robe and prepares to face the jealous husband, but a panicking Charlotte tells Teddy to hide outside on the window ledge while she deals with the husband. While siting on the ledge, waiting, a crowed of onlookers gather around the building after seeing Teddy on the ledge. Concerned that Teddy will jump, the fire department and media soon arrive in front of the apartment building. At home, Didi and her daughters see Teddy on television, sitting on the ledge and smoking a cigarette. As the fire department sets up a safety net trampoline to catch Teddy and yells for him to jump, he overhears Charlotte having sex with her husband. Suddenly, he realizes the ridiculousness of his near infidelity and thinks about his wonderful wife and family. Teddy jumps, believing that he has learned his lesson, but a cute, blonde reporter on the ground catches his eye while he falls....

The film opens with "Flashdance... What a Feeling," which is a recurring theme throughout the entire film. During the opening credits 18-year-old Alexandra 'Alex' Owens (Jennifer Beals) rides her bicycle through Pittsburgh on her way to work as a welder at one of the city's steel mills. After work, Alex moonlights as a dancer at Mawby's Bar, which features dancers in a go-go atmosphere. Nick Hurley, one of the steel mill bosses, enters the bar as Alex performs a dance to "He's a Dream." Nick is intrigued by Alex. His friend tells him that she works for him at the mill. Richie, the bar's cook, wants to be go to Los Angeles to become a standup comedian. He tries out some of his material on Jeanie, one of the waitresses. At work the next day, Nick introduces himself to Alex, tells her he saw her dance and asks why a dancer would be working as a welder. She responds, "a girl's got to make a living." Their first meeting ends when Nick is called away to another area of the mill. Alex lives by herself in a converted warehouse loft with her pit bull, named Grunt. When she gets home from work, she channel surfs for something worth watching on TV. She stops on some ballet dancers performing to "Adagio for Strings" and attempts to copy their moves. It is Alex's dream to study at a local, prestigious school of dance, the Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company. She changes into exercise clothes, tapes her bare feet and feverously exercises to "Maniac." The song's lyrics reflect her passion to become a serious dancer. After her strenuous workout, she's exhausted. The next day Alex bikes to the Repertory building to obtain an application, but is discouraged when she finds several girls waiting for applications. The lady in the admissions office instructs them to list all their previous years of training. Alex leaves without an application and bikes to work. When Alex and Nick share an elevator ride at work, he asks her to lunch or dinner, but she tells him she doesn't have dinner with the boss. Later Alex visits Hanna Long, a retired professional dancer, who has become her mentor. Hanna encourages Alex to pursue her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer, but Alex makes excuses for not auditioning for the Rep. After she leaves Hanna's, Alex bikes to a nearby church where she confesses to the priest that she thinks a lot about sex and she told a lie. Hanna was badgering Alex to get the application for the Rep, but she didn't want to make her friend unhappy by telling her that she didn't have the courage to go through with it. In the next scene Johnny C., who runs the Zanzibar strip club, and his not-too-bright bodyguard, Cecil, try to entice customers into his club. At a self service laundry, Alex notices that Jeanie is washing Richie's underwear, confirming that these two are a serious couple. Jeanie's father is giving her a hard time because Richie hasn't proposed. Jeanie has dreams of becoming a professional ice skater. Next, Alex and several of the dancers from Mawby's exercise with weights and use workout machines to "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." As Jeanie and Alex walk down the street, a group of African-American guys breakdance and moonwalk to music played on their jambox. Quite a crowd gathers to watch their demonstration. As the girls continue their walk, a policeman directs traffic. When Alex helps the traffic cop with his duties, it turns into a traffic signal dance, as an excerpt from Georges Bizet's "Carmen Suite No. 2: Garde montant" is heard. At dinner at Jeanie's parents house, Alex defends her friend's dream of becoming a professional ice skater even though her parents don't seem to have much confidence in their daughter's abilities. After dinner the two girls go to the ice rink where Jeanie showcases some of her skating skills. In the following scene Richie is backstage practicing some of his jokes waiting to go on while one of the dancers finishes her routine on stage. Alex and a couple of the other dancers are in the audience rooting for him. Jeanie stops her waitressing to listen. At first, Richie's jokes bomb. Only after he threatens to put cockroaches in the hamburgers does the audience warm up to his humor. At the end of his routine, he introduces Tina Tech, who dances to "Manhunt." Johnny C. visits Mawby's to recruit some of the dancers to work at the Zanzibar. When he stops Alex and squeezes her buttocks, she pours beer on his crotch. Later after work as Richie and Alex are walking through a parking lot, Johnny and Cecil stop them. After Cecil socks Richie in the nose, Nick breaks up a potentially violent payback. Afterwards, Alex thanks Nick for his help and bikes home. Nick follows her in his Porsche and asks her to dinner again. Once again she reiterates that it isnt a good idea to go out with her boss, so he kiddingly fires her and sets a date for the next evening. On their date, Alex and Nick first attend Jeanie's ice skating competition. Jeanie's parents and Richie are also there to watch her skate to "Gloria." Unfortunately, Jeanie falls a couple of times. Afterwards, Alex tries to cheer Jeanie up, but she is discouraged that she has spent so much time and practice towards something that now seems like a waste. Her father, who hasn't been very supportive of his daughter's dream, reassures her of his love. After the ice skating competition Nick and Alex decide to have pizza for dinner. They pick it up and take it back to her warehouse apartment. She immediately changes into a much more comfortable sloppy sweatshirt. Alex tells Nick about the time her father took her family to the symphony. At first, she was bored, but her father suggested that if she closed her eyes she could see the music. Before the evening is over, Nick and Alex end up in bed. The next day the two lovers walk on the railroad tracks as "Lady, Lady, Lady" is heard. They go inside an old building where Nick sees Alex spin like a ballet dancer. When he asks her to do it again, she says she was just fooling around. She explains that she has never studied dance; she's read books on ballet and watches ballet, but has never taken classes. Then she explains how she does what she does at Mawby's. She just feels the music, something clicks inside and she becomes somebody else. And she loves to get up there and disappear into the music. In the following scene, Alex dances an avant garde routine in white face makeup to "Imagination." The number has a lot to do with fantasies becoming reality. Nobody seems to understand Alex's dance except for one of the other dancers in the club, Heels. During the song Johnny C. asks Jeanie why she doesn't dance. She tells him she's been practicing. After he makes a suggestive remark about doing the horizontal mambo, he gives her a big tip. Alex attends a ballet performance of Claude Debussys "Prélude à lAprès-midi dun Faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn)" at the Repertory with Hanna. When the ballet is over, Alex happens to see Nick with another woman. She is furious! Still in her concert dress, she rides her bike to his house, throws a rock through one of his windows, calls him a son of a bitch and retreats quickly. Back at the warehouse, her radiator has sprung a leak. While she is on her knees mopping up the water in her concert dress, Richie comes by to tell her goodbye; he's headed for L.A. When she asks about Jeanie, he admits he loves her, but he says he can't continue to cook hamburgers at Mawby's and pretend to be a comedian. The next day at the mill, Nick tries to pay for Alex's lunch at the lunch truck, but she is still very mad. She demands to know who the blond was that was with him the previous evening. He explains that it was his ex-wife. Since they have friends on the Arts Council, he takes her to the benefit once a year. Now Alex feels guilty that she broke his window. When they reconcile, the workers who are sitting around eating their lunch applaud. That evening Nick and Alex have dinner at a fancy restaurant. Alex, who is dressed in a tuxedo coat, eats her lobster with her fingers. During the meal, just as Alex puts her foot on Nick's crotch, his ex-wife, Katie, stops by their table. After a few catty remarks from Katie that are aimed at Alex, Alex takes her tux coat off to reveal she is only wearing a shirt bib and cuffs. Then she proudly announces that on her first date with Nick: "I fucked his brains out!" Later that evening, Nick and Alex talk about his marriage to Katie; she was high class, educated, from a good family and it made him feel like he had made it. But one day he realized that wasn't what he really wanted. So he started over and went after what he really wanted to do. Alex asks, "How did you do it?" Nick answers, "I took a deep breath and jumped." Their conversation gave Alex the renewed desire to pursue her dream, so the next day she goes to the Rep for an application. There she is reminded that auditions to the school are by invitation only. Nick sees her leave the building, so he goes inside and finds out about her getting an application. He immediately telephones a friend on the Arts Council asking for a favor. At Mawby's Halloween Party, the owner and his guests are dancing to "Romeo." During the party, Richie returns from L.A. Jeanie is very cool towards Richie and leaves the party with Johnny C. When Alex gets a letter from the Repertory, she's afraid to open it. Finally she musters enough courage and is ecstatic when she discovers she's been invited to audition. She runs to find Nick to break the news, who suggests they celebrate at dinner that evening. Later in the day, she bikes to Hanna's to tell her the good news. Hanna congratulates and encourages her. On an after dinner drive later that evening, Nick commits a faux pas: he says he called the restaurant the previous night and told them this was a special occasion. Alex immediately realizes that he knew she was going to be invited to audition before she received the letter. She makes him stop the car in the middle of a tunnel, gets out and walks away. He tries to make her understand that he just made a phone call to a friend. She, however, yells that she doesn't want his help. Afterward Alex needs to talk to a friend, so she calls Mawby's to talk to Jeanie. They inform her that Jeanie now works at the Zanzibar. Alex immediately heads for the nude club. Before she arrives, we see several of the nude or semi-nude girls performing to "Seduce Me Tonight." Once Alex enters the club, she spots Jeanie (clad in only high-heeled shoes and a G-string) dancing, and Alex literally drags her off the stage. When Johnny C. tries to stop her, Alex pushes him out of the way. Outside in the rain, Jeanie asks Alex why she came after her. Alex responds, "Because you're my friend." Later that evening, when Alex returns to her warehouse apartment, Nick and Grunt are waiting outside in the rain. When Alex didn't show up at work that day, Nick came to investigate. He accuses her of being scared to audition for the Rep and of using him as an excuse. Just before he leaves he says, "When you give up your dream, you die." The next day Alex bikes to Hanna's, but sadly discovers that her mentor had died the previous day. As Alex mourns the loss of her friend and mentor, she picks up a pair of Hanna's ballet slippers to take as a memento. During this and the following scene, "I'll Be There Where the Heart Is" is heard. Back at her apartment Alex continues to mourn; the song continues as she sits alone on the floor of her bathroom and wanders aimlessly around her warehouse apartment. Alex returns to Mawby's to pick up her stuff, then goes to confession. She tells the priest "I want it so much." The next scene is Alex's audition for the dance school before five stuffy judges. She puts on a recording of "Flashdance... What a Feeling," starts her dance, stops and starts again. During the slow beginning of the song, the judges seem completely unimpressed and maybe even bored, but when the tempo picks up the stodgy judges begin to loosen up. The lyrics are very germane to the plot. They sing about a dream that is hidden because of fear and about crying in a world made of steel. This dancer hears the music, closes her eyes and allows it to invade her body (like her father had suggested when he took her to the symphony). Then she is the music, she is the rhythm, and she dances as if her life depended on it. The song continues as Alex exits the building with a huge smile on her face. Waiting for her are Nick and Grunt. After Alex hugs Nick, he presents her with a bouquet of roses (like most ballerinas receive after a brilliant performance). When she takes out one rose to give to Nick, the scene freezes to end the film (we are left to speculate whether Alex was accepted into the dance school, but we are confident that she was). As the closing credits begin, "Flashdance... What a Feeling" continues, followed by "Manhunt," "Imagination," and "Maniac."