(2003)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

One night, Calvin (Will Friedle) and Leonard (Chris Owen) decide to kill Betty (Renée Taylor) and Doris (Louise Lasser) by blowing them away with shotguns while they are asleep in the bedroom, unaware that Betty and Doris have also decided to kill them in the exact same way. Both duos go into the room at the same time from separate entrances, but because they all decided to wear blindfolds and plug their ears so they wouldn’t have to see or hear the murder, the only thing that gets shot is the bed. Afterward, everyone removes their blindfolds to check out the aftermath, and when both pairs see each other, each person realizes that their spouse has been trying to kill them. Calvin and Betty subsequently get into a big argument over that and other things, and it devolves into blows, with Betty emerging as the victor. However, Leonard and Doris sit down and chat, and after they apologize to each other, they realize that they have truly fallen in love, and they kiss.

Leonard and Doris approach Calvin and Betty sometime after they have finished their fight and let them know that they are in love, and Calvin and Betty congratulate them for it. However, Betty reminds everyone that love doesn’t pay the bills, then brings up how her and Doris’ insane uncle Walt (Rudy De Luca) has the inheritance money their father left them, and she tells them she knows that he keeps it stashed in his safe. Calvin soon proposes they all break into Walt’s mansion and steal that money back, and everyone agrees.

However, when the quartet tries to sneak Doris inside the mansion via the coal chute, she crash-lands at the bottom, alerting Walt and his Doberman, Bruno. Believing the invaders to be Nazis, Walt puts on his Army combat gear, but then he suffers what appears to be a heart attack. Just after Doris has let the others inside through the front door, Bruno appears and growls at them, but it turns out that they prepared for him when Leonard opens up his coat to show him that he has a bunch of steaks pinned to his shirt, which he and the others had earlier stuffed with sedatives. Bruno goes right after Leonard, giving the others a chance to head up the stairwell in order to confront Walt in his TV room, and they find him sitting upright on the sofa. Leonard rejoins them soon after, and he informs them that Bruno has eaten the steaks and fallen asleep. Moments later, they go right up to Walt and demand for him to give them the combination to the safe, but they find him wide-eyed and completely unresponsive, and they come to think that he is dead. They try to revive him after Calvin yells that the manner of his apparent death goes against their plan, but all of their attempts fail. Calvin then decides they need to take a different approach with Walt’s body, so he and Leonard drop him down the stairwell to make it look like he died in a simple fall. They, Betty, and Doris then go and find the safe.

After checking it over, Calvin decides that they will just have to rip the door right off of it. He thus wraps one end of a chain around the door’s handle wheel while Leonard brings the other end outside and secures it around the hitch of the convertible that they came in, and Leonard gets in the car and – on Calvin’s command through a walkie-talkie – stomps on the gas pedal. Just then, Walt suddenly awakens, having only been in a stupor, and he hears all the noise and makes his way back upstairs. Calvin’s and Leonard’s plan results in the entire safe getting yanked away from the wall without the door breaking off, and Leonard keeps on driving, which pulls the safe along the floor and into the hallway. Calvin then tells Leonard to hit the brakes, so he does, and this causes the safe to go sliding across the floor until it sandwiches the arriving Walt against a wall and kills him. Leonard goes back inside and meets with Calvin, Betty, and Doris, and they watch as the safe’s door slowly creaks open and reveals the millions of dollars contained within. They all soon celebrate, and off-screen, they divide the money into equal shares.

We then find out what became of everyone:

  • Leonard and Doris settled into suburbia, where her art flourished, winning the praises of two local critics. They also adopted Bruno, who is like a “hairy vicious child” to them.
  • Walt was cremated, and Calvin and Leonard tried to get his ashes entombed in Arlington National Cemetery, but they were flatly rejected (since he never actually served in the Army). In the end, they drove up outside the cemetery’s fence and threw his urn in.
  • Calvin and Betty got divorced, but they remain friends, and Calvin got himself romantically involved with Charlene (Nikki Ziering), a gorgeous model that he has had a huge crush on for a long time. However, it quickly becomes clear to the viewer that she is only dating him because of his wealth.

Betty is last shown doing a striptease for the Minister (J.J. Cole), who officiated her and her sister’s weddings to Calvin and Leonard.

01 hours 30 minutes