The Maddening
| The Maddening | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Danny Huston |
| Produced by |
Mark Amin Charles Finch Leslie Greif |
| Written by |
Andrew Neiderman (novel) Henry Slesar Leslie Greif |
| Starring |
Burt Reynolds Angie Dickinson Mia Sara Brian Wimmer |
| Music by | Peter Manning Robinson |
| Cinematography | Nick McLean |
| Editing by |
Eric L. Beason Roberto Silvi |
| Distributed by | Trimark Pictures |
| Release dates | 1995 |
| Running time | 95 min |
| Country |
 USA |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $5,000 |
The Maddening is a 1995 horror film directed by Danny Huston.
Based on a novel by Andrew Neiderman, published under the title Playmates, this was a direct-to-video creepfest featuring Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson.
Synopsis
A young couple, Cassie and David Osborne, have an intense argument as he spends too much time on business trips. The next morning, after David goes to work, Cassie takes their five-year-old daughter Samantha to stay with her sister, Joanne, for a few days.
Having car trouble, they stop at a seedy-looking gas station, where they are tended to by Roy Scudder, the owner. Instead of helping the mother and child, Scudder rigs the vehicle to break down a short distance down the road. Then he drives down the road and offers to tow them back to his place.
Once there, he locks Cassie in a room to entertain his insane wife Georgina, who's been out of sorts since the mysterious death of her baby boy. Samantha is made to be a "playmate" for the Scudders' daughter Jill, who appears to be as unstable as her mother. Georgina and Jill believe the two Osbornes to in fact be Marlena and Donna, respectively Georgina's widowed sister and niece.
Joanne panics after Cassie and Samantha never reach her house. She calls the police, convinced that David had something to do with their disappearance. David begins desperately searching for his missing wife and child. He is tracked by a police officer who is convinced David has murdered Cassie and Samantha.
Cassie finds a large spanner in her room and is locked up for so long that she urinates in the room before using the spanner to knock the pins up from the room's door hinges. A photo of Marlena shows a resemblance to Cassie and Roy remarks on the similarity before tearing up the photo. Georgina insists upon bathing Cassie, who hides the spanner in the toilet bowl in the bathroom, and being called "Sis'". When Samantha is let out by Jill she is pulled away from Cassie by Roy. Cassie attacks him with the spanner but is overpowered. He takes her back to her room and while he straddles her unconscious body he is encouraged to rape her by a hallucination of Roy's deceased father. The hallucination insists he will never get another chance as good as this and that he has not had sex for a long time, Georgina refusing to touch him since the death of their "idiot child" Arthur.
David turns up at the Scudder's house and is knocked unconscious by Roy when Jill drops out the window the doll David bought for Samantha on his last business trip. He is dropped into a dry water well and partly buried. Roy returns to Cassie later that evening with drugged milk and he has a flashback of smothering Arthur in his crib to end Arthur's pain. He tells Cassie to change clothes in front of him. She starts then tells him that she will tell Georgina what he is doing and he leaves.
David climbs out of the well, in which he noticed human remains, at night while a drugged Cassie escapes her room. She is found unconscious by Roy who carries her back to bed where he rapes her and then chains her to the bed. Samantha escapes Jill and talks to her mother Cassie. Samantha then goes into the bathroom where she meets her father who climbs out of the window before Roy enters. Samantha tricks Jill into taking her into the woods where Jill digs up Arthur's grave in which his mummified body remains and Samantha escapes. David finds Cassie but soon leaves and is hunted through the swamps by Roy with a shotgun until Roy finds Arthur's grave and collapses. The police officer finds the van David took from his sister in law and calls in his discovery but then has his throat cut by Roy and dies.
Cassie tells Georgina that Roy raped her but Georgina does not believe her insisting, in her delusion that Cassie was her sister Marlena, that Marlena was going to call the police because Roy killed Arthur. David arrives and Georgina accepts that he is Marlena's new husband and that it would be best for them to leave. Roy arrives and says that Marlena and Donna are dead and that they died when Georgina gave them (perhaps unintentionally) lethal overdoses of sleeping tablets in milk to prevent them going to the police.
Being taunted by the hallucination of his father Roy shoots at the hallucination but instead kills Georgina. In the following combat Roy shouts to Cassie "I love you Marlena" before Cassie shoots him dead. The next day the Osborne parents are reunited with Samantha and Jill sits rocking on the well before dropping Samantha's doll into it.
Cast
- Burt Reynolds as Scudder
- Angie Dickinson as Georgina
- Mia Sara as Cassie
- Candace Hutson as Jill
- Brian Wimmer as David
- Marie Debrey as Joanne
- Kayla Buglewicz as Samantha