Hey Don't I Know You Moment: Dennis Quaid as the sneaky, sneaky Phil.
Hey Don't I Know You Moment II: Blythe Danner! What are you doing in this movie?
Gail is your typical teenage girl. Despite only living in town for six months, she already has a best friend and an ex-boyfriend. That boyfriend dumped her when she refused to put out, but as her mom tells us later, "she's not a virgin!" At the beginning of the film, the camera slowly pans across a typical 1970's living room to show us a beaten and battered Gail on the floor, or as beaten and battered as you can look with one bruise on your face. At the hospital, Gail reveals that she was raped but "no one will believe he did it," which is why she won't name names.
Now we go back in time. Alison, her best friend, has a hunky boyfriend named Phil who she adores. She tots dreams of them spending the rest of their lives together and thinks that he would never cheat on her. She even talks about their future wedding. Since no woman is complete without a man by her side, Alison decides to fix her loser friend Gail up with Steve. The four go on a double date to an ice cream shop, which is oh so cute.
The next day, Gail admits that she like-likes Steve. He's smart, sexy, and 900 other adjectives that she mentions. Alison thinks that they make the perfect couple, but her mom isn't crazy about her dating anyone. Her parents actually have a minor argument because her mom (Danner) thinks they got married too young. Way to tell your husband you shouldn't have married him! She dislikes her daughter dating even more when the two decide to do steady.
The one dark spot in her happy life is a note that arrives in her locker from someone claiming that he's watching her. Alison laughs it off because it's clearly a practical joke from someone else. Gail decides to laugh it off too, but the letters keep coming. We then meet a whole bunch of characters designed to make us wonder if one of them is her stalker. There's her ex-boyfriend, her friends, and her photography teacher.
In one of the movies ickiest scenes, her photography teacher gives the class a lecture on how to pose for different types of profile pictures. He chooses Gail to model a sexy pose. She puts on a costume and does a few poses, but "that's Hollywood sexy, show we Gail sexy." Okay then. Clearly her high school teacher looks forward to the day he winds up behind bars.
Gail comes home from a date to find her parents arguing. Her mom wants to go back to work and found a real estate job, but her dad thinks women should be barefoot and pregnant or in the kitchen. Just kidding. He actually just rants about how she doesn't need to work. After getting another letter, Gail decides to visit her dad at work and ask for his advice. Surprise! Daddy no longer has a job. His company fired him over a month ago. When she points out that he still leaves home at the same time every day, the secretary responds, "Yeah, lots of guys do that." What the hell kind of town is this? Gail confronts her mom about his job, and she mom basically tells her to STFU and leave him alone because he's ashamed about losing his job.
Her stalker then decides to just keep coming at her. He starts calling her at home and while she sits, which leads to a creepy moment where she tries to run home and her photography teacher suddenly shows up and offers her a ride. Her stalker also leaves her more threatening notes and notes calling her a slut or a whore. No one seems to find this strange, but since Steve at least listens to her, she jumps his bones. After dozens of scenes with the camera following her around to mimic someone stalking her, we finally get to the scene from the beginning.
After getting a phone call from someone who claims he can see her, she calls Steve for help and he agrees to come right over. Someone knocks on the door, but instead of Steve, it's Phil! He asks if Alison is there, says he's worried about her, and then asks to use her phone. While she goes back to her homework, he pretends to make a call and then wipes his fingerprints from the phone. He then lowers his voice and reveals he was the guy from the phone.
Gail thinks he's playing with her until he grabs her and smacks her around a little. Phil accuses her of teasing him by...I don't know, being best friends with his girlfriend? He rapes her on the living room floor before grabbing the wall, touching multiple things in the house, and then slamming the door behind him. Good job wiping the fingerprints off the phone but leaving prints all over the rest of the house.
While in the hospital, Gail refuses to tell anyone who did it to her. She even changes her story to say it was a guy she didn't know in a sweater that might have been brown who probably had brown hair. The police officer, who has the cutest little police cap!, warns her that if she doesn't give them a name, the case won't go ahead. Just as the cop goes to leave, Gail finally names Phil.
We then jump forward to her kitchen. Her dad wants to go over to Phil's house and beat the crap out of him, but her mom calms him down. We learn that Phil's dad is good pals with some judge, who is apparently the only judge in town, so the law won't go after him. Blythe then bursts into tears and says that they won't take the case because they can't win and they can't win because, "she isn't a virgin!" Their lawyer puts out that it's much more complicated than that. They actually can't win because (a) they were friends, (b) she willingly let Phil into her house, and (c) she's not a virgin. Wait, what? Yeah, the local police won't take the rape charges seriously because Gail isn't a virgin.
Since this is one wild and crazy town, Gail refuses to go back to school. She decides to move to Connecticut and live with her aunt. That all changes when one of her teachers comes for a visit and points out that if she runs away, Phil wins. So, off Gail goes back to school. Steve feels bad because he knows she only opened the door that night on the assumption that he was behind it, and Alison keeps ignoring her.
When Gail finally gets Alison alone, her friend says that Phil told her that Gail kept throwing herself at him. Even though he cheated on her, it's okay because it totally wasn't his fault. He couldn't, you know, resist someone throwing herself at him. They have a huge teenage girl fight, where Gail accuses her friend of not wanting to hear anything that might disrupt her future wedding and the other girl running off in tears.
Gail and Steve decide to set Phil up after she gets another letter. They place a time release camera hidden near her locker. The camera captures Phil dropping off another threatening letter. When he realizes what she did, he follows her into the room. Instead of screaming for help, she throws paint at him and backs further into the room. When she finally does scream for help, Steve and another student rush to her aid and find Phil about to punch her in the face. Gail tells us in a voice-over that Phil pleaded guilty to an assault charge and got sent to boarding school. That's punishment, I guess?
Lessons Learned:
Do not let people you know into your home.
Unwanted sexual contact doesn't count if you had sex before.
Dennis Quaid still looks hot, even when he's assaulting someone.
