Deceived(1991)

Submitted by Julio M

Short pooper
“Jack”, “Frank” and “Dan” (John Heard) are all the same person; he is a murderous, conniving scam artist who has led multiple lives, even under Adrienne’s (Goldie Hawn) nose. When she figures everything out, he kidnaps their daughter Mary (Ashley Peldon) and compels her to retrieve that priceless Egyptian necklace he has been after, and trade it for Mary. They scuffle; she runs, he chases her and, in the end, she dupes him to try and get her, only for him to get killed. Adrienne and Mary survive.

Longer version
Following on the multiple clues that seem to show that Jack is not the man she thought he was -including meeting his actual estranged mother, Rosalie (Kate Reid)-, Adrienne is contacted by a “Mrs. Sullivan”, being summoned to that address, where she discovers Jack, alive and well. She angrily confronts him for his deception and he admits he had to fake his death to escape from “a certain Dan Sherman” who is blackmailing him for the possession of the rare Egyptian necklace that partly triggered the whole mystery, supposedly in their apartment; he convinces Adrienne to search for it and, as she leaves, it is revealed he murdered Rosalie.

While searching for the necklace, Adrienne comes across a piece of ID with a picture of Jack/Frank, now under a third name: DAN SHERMAN (the alleged blackmailer). Upon paying a surprise visit to the address indicated on it, she is received by a “Mrs. Sherman”; around the house, Adrienne notices wedding pictures of the woman and Jack, as well as one of Rosalie, whom the woman identifies as “Dan’s older, deceased sister”. Suddenly, a phone call comes in: it is Jack, having anticipated Adrienne clueing in on this deception, warning her that he has kidnapped Mary and, if she wants the girl to live, she must come up with the necklace and bring it to their apartment.

Adrienne tracks down the necklace to the house of a friend of Mary’s, to whom Mary had traded the necklace as if it were a second-rate bauble and who now refused to give it back; Adrienne, fed up with how pushovers the girl’s parents were being and couldn’t convince her to give it back, just snatches it and walks off. When Adrienne reacquaints with Jack, she demands to see Mary and he alludes “she is safely playing in his car”. They end up getting in a brawl when she insists on seeing her daughter and he orders to have the necklace; Adrienne stabs him and runs around the half-under-construction building, with Jack in pursuit.

Eventually, Jack comes to corner Adrienne, hidden in a semi-dark freight elevator. He finally admits his true, dangerous nature to her -he keeps bellowing, at the top of his lungs, that “HE ALWAYS DID WHAT CAME NEXT, TO MATTER HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS”-; at this point, it seems like Adrienne is admitting defeat and goads him to “just come to her and take the necklace”. Motivated by this, he opens the gate to the elevator to walk towards her; but then, he is seen falling several feet down a shaft, to his death. She was actually clinging to the cable of an out-of-use elevator, which couldn’t be distinguished as so in the penumbra where she was hiding, and duped him into a death trap.

The movie ends as Adrienne and Mary, safe and sound, are packing their belongings, getting ready to move elsewhere and start anew.