Movies - A Night in Heaven

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	Movies - A Night in Heaven

A Night in Heaven is a 1983 film directed by John G. Avildsen and starring Christopher Atkins as a college student.

The movie topped box office charts for the year, but critics widely panned the movie.

Main cast

Christopher Atkins
- Rick Monroe
Lesley Ann Warren
- Faye Hanlon
Robert Logan - Whitney Hanlon
Carrie Snodgress
- Mrs. Johnson

Plot summary

Christopher Atkins plays Rick Monroe, a jock and a popular guy in college. He is outspoken and over confident. Lesley Ann Warren plays Faye Hanlon who is Rick's speech teacher. At the end of his final report for his class, Rick cracks a joke and Faye is not amused. She decides to fail him and make him take the course over again.

At the same time, Faye is going through a slump in her marriage to Whitney Hanlon, a rocket scientist and has just lost his job (played by Robert Lohan). Faye's sister, who is in town, takes her to a strip club to cheer her up. This is the same place where Rick moonlights as an exotic dancer to pay his fees. When he notices Faye in the crowd, instead of shying away, he give her a very special lap dance and romance flares between the two. Whitney keeps traveling around in search of a new job. Faye experiences more loneliness which drives her to Rick. And Rick, who by this time knows he's failing and wants to change that, will do anything, even have an affair with the much older woman. Rick sleeps with Faye, but still decides to keep his girlfriend.

Suddenly one day, Faye walks in on Rick and his younger girlfriend in the shower, realizing she's been had and leaves. Meanwhile Whitney gets to know about his wife's affair, and gets furious with Rick. He rushes to Rick's dorm room, where he is hanging around with his girlfriend. Whitney forcefully kidnaps Rick. On the water front, an angry Whitney pushes Rick on a boat. On the moving boat, Whitney says that he wants to see Rick dance; a confused Rick disagrees, and then Whitney gets a pistol out. A shocked Rick gasps, and Whitney asks him to strip his clothes. Now really frightened, Rick takes his shirt off, but Whitney wants all the clothes to come off. Rick very reluctantly takes his pants off. Standing on the boat edge, with just his underwear on, Rick looks helplessly at Whitney, angry because his orders were not being followed exactly, points the gun at Rick.

Rick leans forward as though removing his underwear, with a sudden jerk he jumps up a tries to grab the gun, but he only manages to knock the gun off Whitney's hand. Rick tries to get hold of the gun, but Whitney pushes him and he falls hard to his back. Regaining the gun and smiling, Whitney says, "So you want to play it that way, huh?" He screams at Rick to take the underwear off. Rick obeys.

Once he is completely naked, the wronged husband confronts Rick, "Where do you get off f---ing my wife?" Rick, who is now on the verge of tears, finds it hard to get words out of his mouth. He finally manages to say, "I thought she was lovely, please don't kill me, please please..." Rick pleads and begs Whitney to spare his life. Whitney then shoots a few bullets and Rick, thinking that he's being shot at, falls into another smaller boat. But Whitney only holes that boat and leaves.

At the end, the couple talk about their problems and resolve them. But things don't end so well for Rick Monroe; he is shown standing helplessly without his clothes on a sinking boat in the middle of the river.

From the DVD commentary

When Chris signed on to play Rick, there was no actual nudity written in the movie. They were shooting the scene where Lesley Ann Warren
and Chris Atkins
have sex, she rubs his crotch and pulls his pants down and then the camera is supposed to move away, but accidentally that day, Chris was not wearing any underwear and his slightly aroused penis popped out. It was only when the director sat down to edit that day's work that he noticed this unscripted occurrence. He thought it might add a new dimension to the scene and really show off the intimacy between the two lead characters and decided to keep it. But unfortunately Atkins was not informed about this, and he came to know only when he watched the pre-release, but nothing could be done at that time as the movie prints had already been distributed to the theatres.
Even the final scene came up unintentionally; the original script was exactly similar to the final draft, but without the nudity. But director John G. Avildsen
was not happy with it. Rick had been such a jerk and had taken advantage of everyone around him for his own good. He wanted to teach him a lesson. It was then that he came up with the idea, to play him at his own game, stripping. Robert Logan, who was gay, was very excited as he had to do a dramatic 15 minute climax with Chris Atkins
completely naked and weeping like a little baby, to let him go.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for A Night in Heaven ]

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