The Promise (1979)

Oh!  The movies I’ve seen!

The Promise is one of the dumbest movies I’ve ever seen.  I’m serious.  I sat there appalled at the level of collective stupidity that was being laid out before me and had to remind myself that this was a drama that was made with serious intentions.

The only way to really discuss it is to run down its plot points, but make sure you remind yourself that, yes, everything you’re about to read is part of this movie:

∙ Stephen Collins plays Michael Hillyard, the heir to an architectural fortune.
∙ He wants to marry his girlfriend, Nancy (Kathleen Quinlan).
∙ His mother (Beatrice Straight) is a high-falutin’ society dame who disapproves of the woman that he wants to marry.
∙ Mother has had a private investigator dig up some criminal dirt in her past and therefore disapproves of this union.
∙ Michael and Nancy have a car accident that puts him in a coma and her with such severe facial damage that she has to have plastic surgery.
∙ Mother plots against the union by paying for her plastic surgery but only if she promises to move to San Francisco and never have any contact with Michael again.
∙ Michael awakens from his coma and mother tells him that Nancy has died.
∙ Soon after they are reunited when he’s in San Francisco.
But!
∙ He has amnesia and doesn’t recognize her.
∙ She still cares about him but wants to keep the promise.
∙  But something, something about this girl is nagging at him.
∙ They have an argument in a parking lot that ends with her driving away and him standing alone and screaming into nothingness.
 ∙ He keeps looking at her photographs and still doesn’t connect that it’s the same girl.

WOW!  Is this movie plugged-in or what?  I’ve seen episodes of “Sesame Street” with better dramatic tension.