Gotham (1988) (aka The Dead Can't Lie)

In writer/director Lloyd Fonvielle's often incoherent, film-noirish horror thriller-ghost story - the surreal and supernatural film was originally made for Showtime cable-TV, and in some ways resembled Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). The film's costuming and atmospheric time-frame approximated the noirish 1940s, but was presumably much later in the late 70s and 80s.

The 98-minute plotline was a flashbacked story about how a private detective was hired by a twitchy and nervous husband, who felt haunted by his deceased, former femme fatale wife from 10 years earlier. The PI was instructed to prevent the female from tormenting and stalking him - mostly about her stolen jewels. During the case, the PI soon found himself falling in love with the alluring 'ghost' himself. Its tagline was: "Some Passions Can Be Deadly." The following questions could be asked:

- Was the PI being scammed and conned by his client and/or the female?
- Was it part of the scam to make the detective think he was delusional and crazy and believing there was a resurrected ghostly female?

• the opening titles credits appeared above a nighttime aerial view of Manhattan; in the film's opening scene set in a NYC bar (Yates Irish Pub), rich, nervous and "unappealing" husband Charles "Charlie" Rand (Colin Bruce) began to describe to the bartender (Alec Willows) how he was facing real trouble; some of the first lines of dialogue followed the bartender's dare to the customer to tell him about the predicament he faced, and Charlie reluctantly complied: "You ever find yourself walking down a dark street, you think you hear footsteps coming up slowly, somebody just out of sight?"

Charles "Charlie" Rand (Colin Bruce) in a NYC Bar Describing His "Troubles"

Beginning of Rand's Lengthy Flashback on NYC Street Outside His Apartment

First View of Haunting, Rachel Carlyle (Virginia Madsen) Confronting "Charlie" on the Street

• the film's plotline was then presented in a lengthy flashback, beginning with Rand being followed by a shadowy female figure down a dark NY street to the steps leading into his apartment, where the female addressed him by name - "Charlie" [Note: Was Charlie just dreaming about fears in his guilty conscience?]
• the next morning, Charlie was awakened by a patrol-cop and cautioned about sleeping outside and blocking the apartment's front-door entrance; in voice-over, Charlie explained: "I was in trouble, see. Trouble of a very special kind. That's when Eddie Mallard came into my life"
• seedy, down-on-his-luck NYC private detective and gumshoe Edward "Eddie" Martel Mallard (Tommy Lee Jones), who was idly playing with a Rubik's Cube at his desk (a metaphor for his own puzzled life), was threatened with eviction from his office by his landlord (Michael Chapman) for non-payment of his rent; fortuituously, Charlie entered the office and offered to hire Mallard for $175/day with a $1,000 cash advance; he explained how he feared that his wife Rachel Carlyle (pre-Oscar-winning actress Virginia Madsen) had been resurrected and was harassing, following, stalking and tormenting him, and he just wished to be left alone; he explained that he couldn't "divorce" his haunting wife because she was killed in a boating accident in 1975, over 10 years earlier
• after accepting the job due to his desperate finances, Eddie then expressed his concerns to his friend Tim (Kevin Jarre) about working for a crazed, sick and delusional individual: ("I humored his delusion, and I did it because the sight of $1,000 in one place turned me into an asshole")
• Eddie and Charlie tried to locate Rachel in the middle of the day on NYC streets and in a park to see if his ex-wife would appear to them, although she usually appeared at night; Charlie explained: "She lusts for daylight. She wants power in the daylight. That's what makes her so dangerous"; the two ended up at 2:30 am back in Charlie's place for a drink, where he described his socialite trophy female - a beautiful, bewitching femme fatale blonde: ("I married my wife for her looks, Eddie. She married me for my money...I never loved her, not even for a little bit"); however, Charlie described her to Eddie as a "bewitching" and "very beautiful" woman, and how he enjoyed her body for sex:
  • "She's the kind of woman who stakes everything on her beauty, on her sex. She didn't really exist unless she was twirling some love-sick chump around her little finger. lf she came up against someone who was absolutely immune to her, it made her feel like a ghost. Nothing. lt may have something to do with why she's come back"
• before retiring for the night on Charlie's couch, Eddie heard footsteps outside the door and a female voice ("Excuse me"), and saw shadows of a high-heeled female walking back and forth, but no one was in the hallway
• the next day, Charlie alerted Eddie to Rachel's appearance on a busy downtown sidewalk in front of Lladro's store-window; Eddie was warned about her seductive charms: ("Don't let her outsmart you. She's back from the grave, Eddie. She knows things we don't know, remember that")
• Eddie walked over to Rachel across the street who wearing a vintage hat and white gloves; she denied knowing Charlie who was nervously pacing across the way (she laughed about the claim that her alleged husband viewed her as his dead wife returned from the grave as a "ghost" to haunt him); Rachel invited herself to have Eddie treat her to an "expensive" drink in a high-rise restaurant known as the Summit; there, she demeaned Eddie as cheaply-dressed: ("I cannot tolerate a man who wears $100 dollar suits"), since she had "expensive tastes"; she added: "There's nothing fair about me, Eddie. I start the game owning Boardwalk and Park Place, and everybody pays. Thanks for the drink, Eddie. It was fun"

Detective Eddie Mallard Meeting with Rachel on a NYC Downtown Street and Sharing a Drink

• later, back in Eddie's untidy apartment, Charlie described how he had to provide Rachel with jewels for her sexual favors - it was their "arrangement"; he had bought her an expensive "fine diamond choker" a week before her death, and now she was continually demanding their return; Charlie demanded that Eddie have her record on tape her clear terms - that "if she gets the jewels, she'll leave me alone"; Charlie then stressed that he would definitely trust her word to stop pestering him: "The dead, Eddie. They can't lie. They can try to fool ya; they can lead you into lies; but they can't speak a lie with their own lips"; Charlie still had the jewels in his possession in a safe-deposit box, wrapped in a shoebox, and delivered them the next day to Eddie
• at Eddie's office, Rachel suddenly materialized and arrived to apologize for being too "tough and cynical" to him and acting "hard-boiled" the previous day; she offered to take him out and buy him a hamburger; she reminded him that earlier, he had accused her of being a "ghost" - something that she regarded as unique and "incredibly romantic"; she actually admitted: "I feel like a ghost half the time. Like l've got some business here from another time or another century. l've forgotten what it was. l don't have much of a life, Eddie. lt's a ghost's life"; she confessed that her horrible marriage was over, but added that she had aged: "I'll never be young again, not the way I was"; he was beginning to come under her spell, and she sensed it and asked: "Hey, wanna f--k?" - he didn't answer; before she left somewhat embarrassed, she said she would find him sometime later

During A Hamburger Lunch With Eddie
Rachel: "I feel like a ghost half the time"
	Rachel to Eddie: "Hey, wanna f--k?"

• although Eddie suspected that the jewels given to him by Charlie were "hot" and would require a fence, he checked out the contents of the box and was stunned by his friend Tim's feeling that there appeared to be valuable jewels inside
• then, on a foggy deserted nighttime street, Rachel appeared out of the smoke to Eddie in ghostly form: "Sometimes l think l am a ghost"; she had been waiting for him for a couple of hours; as they walked into an alley, for a tip of $5 dollars, Eddie's friend - homeless vagrant Jimbo, sang an emotional rendition of "Danny Boy" for them, bringing tears to Rachel's eyes
• after the song, Eddie began to fall for the alluring female and he kissed her; she told him: "If we stop right here, we'll have all the best of it straight. It will never get mixed up with anything else, and we'll just have the best of each other"; she knew that she was becoming irresistible to him - someone to whom he was becoming attracted, but she didn't want their relationship to become ordinary or too practical when he asked for her name:
  • "See, it's already getting dumb and practical and stupid. You don't want my phone number. You just want to look at me. Look at your beautiful ghost, and see the way she's looking at you, and then you want to close your eyes while she walks out of your life. And if she never comes back again, you won't care, because it's not about that. It's about what you saw when she looked at you, and the feel of her lips for the first time, and the scent of her and the way her hair felt, and the way she cried at that silly song. And you had the best of her, all the best of her."
• when he opened his eyes, Rachel had vanished; that same night as he slept, Eddie was visited by the ghost of his grandfather (Jack Creley), who sat at the foot of his bed, and noted that he shouldn't really be in the real world: "The dead and the living are all mixed together"; Eddie's grandfather spoke about bringing with him a plastic "pirate sword" that he had wanted to give to Eddie when he was a boy, but he had died before he had a chance; however, the Grandpa urged Eddie to just let the sword remain on the bed between them without taking it: ("Don't take it, Eddie boy")

Rachel: "Sometimes I think I am a ghost."
	Eddie Kissing Rachel For the First Time

• the next morning, Tim arrived and awakened Eddie with a numerical evaluation of the jewels - "One mill worth of the real thing" - and said it was too "creepy" for him to get further involved; Tim had done some historical research on the jewels, and knew their sordid past, about how a society dame's husband had purchased the jewels for his wife, but then she died in a boating accident; she had made a request in her will - to be buried naked with the jewels; six months later, somebody dug up her grave and stole the jewels for himself:
  • "There was this society dame, see. Back in 1975, she was killed in a boating accident on the river, fell off a chartered party boat. It seems she left something in her will about wanting to be buried naked, with nothing on but her iewels. So her husband, who's sort of a nut in his own way, goes ahead and does it. So the undertaker talks or something. Six months after they put her under, guess what -- somebody digs her up and relieves her of her finery....Eddie boy, those are the rocks she was buried in, and they are hot as Hades"
• afterwards, Eddie was upset about Charlie lying to him about the jewels and wanted off the case; Charlie confirmed to Eddie that he had dug up Rachel's grave and taken the jewels: "I buried her in the iewels. I hired someone to get them back. And yes, I'm ashamed of it, Eddie. But I paid. She's made me pay. Put yourself in my place. I tried to do the right thing. If I hadn't gotten those jewels, somebody else would have"
• the flashback briefly ended, with Charlie back in the bar to explain his next devious plan: (voice-over): "But I wasn't through with Eddie Mallard, not quite yet"
• off-screen, after getting the box of jewels back from Eddie, Charlie returned the box of jewels to his bank's safe-deposit box to keep them safe, and then wrapped up a second boxed package with fake paste jewels that he brought to Eddie's office; he then instructed Eddie to deliver the jewels to Rachel: (Charlie: "But now that she knows I've got the jewels, I can't keep 'em. You've got to do it"); to tempt Eddie, for an additional $1,000 cash advance plus a bonus of $5,000, Eddie was instructed to get Rachel's taped promise to henceforth leave him alone: "Now, I'm willing to pay you an additional $1,000 dollars cash advance on the rest of the job. All you have to do is take that package to a woman and get her word on tape she'll leave me alone. And I'll give you a $5,000 dollar bonus when I get that tape, too. Now even if I'm crazy, Mr. Mallard, even then, what have you got to lose?...You would be giving me my life back. Crazy or not, I'd be happy, Mr. Mallard"; Eddie agreed to the deal
• three weeks later, after not hearing back from Rachel and with help from Tim to distract and bypass her restrictive apartment's top-hatted, uniformed doorman Mr. Kelly (Peter Jobin) at 330 Central Park West, Eddie was able to enter her high-rise apartment building; there was a white powdery residue at her Apt. # 2601 door, that strangely opened of its own accord; he found the rooms completely vacant; he entered her steamy bathroom where she approached totally naked for a kiss
• after a montage of kisses as he embraced her, he also became naked; in the course of his case, the obsessed Eddie had truly fallen in love with the sultry specter himself; after an interlude, as he nakedly walked up to her in the dark shadows, he also found her lying completely naked on the wooden floor; she whispered to him: "Let's get out of here"
• in the next scene, as they strolled outside, she admitted that she knew "Charlie Rand" - she hadn't divorced him but said she had separated from her husband, and hadn't spoken to him in 10 years; Rachel confirmed for him that as a ghost, she could be believed: "Don't you know? Ghosts can't lie"; when she suggested getting a drink at Jack Dempsey's Restaurant, he took her to its location, but it had been torn down and replaced by a grocery store about 10 years earlier; after he corrected her on her error, she slapped Eddie and unleased her anger on him: "I KILLED YOU, Eddie! And I'm glad I did, I'm glad!"; her face turned chalky white and her eye sockets darkened before she ran off
• some time later, during an intense night-time thunderstorm, Rachel crashed through Eddie's bedroom window and cut her right hand (he wasn't answering his phone or door) and demanded: "Make love to me!" - and he obliged; the next morning, Eddie thought to himself that he was in love with a ghostly female: "I must be crazy." She suggested: "I love f--king in the rain, don't you?...I'd love to f--k you in the middle of Grand Central Station, stark naked in the middle of the floor. We could get away with it, too. Nobody would believe their eyes"
• in regards to his promise to Charlie's case, Eddie insisted that Rachel record a confession into his tape recorder to give to Charlie: ''ln return for my jewels, l promise to leave you alone, Charlie"; she refused ("Stop bugging me") - and then demeaned her ex-husband, calling him an "asshole," "scumbag," and a "thief"; she threatened: "lf you ever mention his name again to me, l'll claw your eyes right out of their sockets"; Eddie was forced to fake the recording and have his female girlfriend Debbie (Denise Stephenson) record the message for him, although she was suspicious: "I'm probably an accessory to a crime"
• Eddie double-crossed Charlie with the fake recording and then kept the box of (fake) jewels for himself (rather than giving the box to Rachel), and was paid off by Charlie with double the promised bonus; the case was presumably over
• meanwhile, in a restaurant as a singer (Molly Johnson) crooned "Where or When," Rachel overtly warned Eddie about her supernatural identity and their inseparable love: "Whatever they tell you about me is true. I'm worse than you can imagine. But don't ever say you didn't know...You chose me. And you'll go on choosing me as awful as it gets. You'll go on choosing me.... because you love me. Because YOU love me"

Rachel's Death: Clippings and Photos in Her Autopsy/Death File

• through his friend Tim who went searching for background information on Rachel, Eddie acquired newspaper clippings and photographs about the Rand family (and its fortune), including Rachel's marriage; she was the only daughter of Victor Carlysle (Carlucci), a failed entrepreneur; he also produced articles titled: "WIFE OF CHARLES RAND DROWNS IN HARBOUR," and pictures of Rachel's dead body; Eddie was very distressed and became nauseated upon viewing them and ordered Tim to leave, before throwing up in his wastebasket
• in the next scene, he found himself lying on a rooftop with Rachel, who was holding two wine glasses, and assuring him: "You're in heaven, Eddie"; they briefly danced to her boom-box playing a Latin tune, before she removed her high-heels, and precariously danced on the narrow roottop ledge; he watched as she disappeared over the edge - he was in a drunken stupor
• after being apprehended by his friends Debbie and Tim to try and salvage his disintegrating life, his friends Eddie feared that he was truly going crazy for sleeping with a dead woman: ("completely f--ked up" and "bonkers"); his girlfriend was fed up with his confused state about the dead woman ("I'm dating a ghost"), and threw a cup of melted ice cream in his face before stomping off; Eddie admitted: "She's dead. She's a corpse...l want her to leave me alone, but she won't. l want to get away from her, but l won't. She'll stay here, or l'll follow her to the grave.... lt may be a dream, but it's one of those dreams you can't wake up from"
• as the 'ghostly' Eddie revisited Rachel's apartment - he walked past the Doorman who couldn't see him - where he found Rachel naked in a refrigerator; he carried her nude body to a bed where he covered her with a silky sheet and kissed her

Ghostly, Sultry Specter Rachel Carlyle: Falling Nude Out of a Refrigerator, Carried to a Bed

• briefly back in his own place, Eddie contemplated committing hari-kiri and slicing his throat with the toy plastic sword; after sitting on a park bench and drinking into the night, he visited Tim's place and found him sleeping in bed with his naked girlfriend Debbie
• shortly later when Eddie returned to his strangely-empty apartment, he then discovered Rachel submerged in his own overflowing bathtub; in the eerie scene, she opened her eyes - and mouthed Eddie's name under the water
• in a park, the troubled Eddie spoke to bearded and robed Russian Orthodox Father George (Frederic Forrest), who affirmed that both angels and demons existed, but the religious leader also claimed he had no direct experience of the "dead coming back from the grave"; Eddie feared that he was the victim of a mythical folk tale that stated "if a man sleeps with a remnant -- that's a ghost -- he dies of it"; the Father theorized: "A ghost may not be a demon, it may just be lost, scared like any other soul in any other form. It may not know how frightening it is, or how dangerous it is...telling lies is their business"
• by a phone call, Rachel summoned Eddie to meet her on the Rand yacht; as the boat sailed from the harbor, tuxedo-clad Eddie met Rachel in a black evening gown with a train; on the deck after hugging and dancing together (to the song "Where or When"), she recalled the night of the elegant party 10 years earlier when she was drunk - and drowned in the harbor, when she unhooked the plank chain and fell off the boat during the party and no one made an effort to save her; in a re-enactment of the drowning, Eddie had a vision of her submerged in the water in her black gown and elbow-high black gloves, and reaching out to be rescued
• in the ending, the next day at noon in his office, Eddie urged Debbie to phone Charlie and while she impersonated Rachel's voice, she insisted that Charlie deliver the real jewels to "shamus" Eddie, to replace the paste-fake jewels he had given him earlier ("That's not fair, Charlie. You know I can fix it so you never sleep again, and I will. I will unless you bring me those jewels"); Charlie was seen leaving the bank with his safe-deposit box's jewels
• meanwhile, Eddie offered Rachel the box of jewels that Charlie had earlier given to him, and told her that they were "junk" - "It's trash!"; although she called Eddie "stupid," after opening the box; Rachel quickly realized that he was telling her the truth - "It's paste. It's cheap paste! Charlie suckered you just like he suckered me....He tried to make fools out of us both, Eddie"

Rachel Realizing the Jewels in Eddie's Box Given to Charlie Were "Paste"

Both Charlie and Rachel Double-Crossed by Eddie and Left With Fake Costume Jewelry in Charlie's Box of Jewelry

• just then, Charlie joined them in Eddie's office carrying what he thought was the box of 'real' jewels from his bank's safe-deposit box; the very-clever Eddie revealed his major double-cross of both of them - he informed Charlie and Rachel that he had anticipated Charlie's deception: "He thinks they're his jewels, the real ones, the ones he locked up in his bank when he slipped that trash back to me. But you didn't look at 'em, did ya, Charlie? You didn't check to see if I'd slipped some trash back to you. Of course you didn't. You didn't think I'd have the balls to stiff you. You were playing me for a chump, Charlie. That gave me room to maneuver"
• in the film's major plot twist, Eddie admitted that he had taken the real jewels for himself and then donated them to a Russian orthodox church and Father George, leaving both Charlie and Rachel with only junk jewelry; he was going to use his $10,000 bonus fee to take an escapist tropical island trip with his friends Tim and Debbie; as Eddie left his office, he told the two scammers: "This was a tough case"
• the flashback ended with Charlie still at the bar and at the end of his story; he had the box of worthless fake jewelry, and a postcard sent from Eddie (with Tim and Debbie) from their vacation in Samoa; his fellow-scammer Rachel arrived and sat next to him, to continue to pester him for her real jewels. She delivered the film's final lines to him: "Hello, Charlie. My jewels, Charlie....What's the matter, Charlie? You look like you've just seen a ghost"

End of Flashback -- Rachel To Charlie at the Bar: "What's the matter, Charlie? You look like you've just seen a ghost"