MST3K Episode 414

Tormented!!!
(exclamation points are optional)
Year released: 1960
Directed by: Bertram Ira Gordon, aka Bert I. Gordon, aka Mr. B.I.G., aka the guy who directed such 50s and 60s gems as King Dinosaur, The Magic Sword, Earth Versus the Spider, Empire of the Ants and Food of the Gods.
Starring: Richard "Black Lagoon" Carlson, Bert I's annoying little daughter who sounds like a seal, a couple of other chicks with equally annoying nasally voices, Lloyd the bartender and  an hourglass blonde who sadly ditches the hourglass and parades around as a disembodied head. Also, Merritt Stone and Gene Roth, separated at birth.

Tom Stewart, a dull, lumpy account analyst from Ho-Hum, Idaho smokingly cool jazz musician from LA's velvet underbelly, is getting married to a snotty, empty-headed little Princess named Meg who lives with her mommy and daddy - aka Lord & Lady VonSnooty - on an island just off the coast of California. Meg's father isn't thrilled about the union, convinced that all jazz musicians are coke-addicted con artists who rub elbows with all sorts of lowlife vermin. Tom's ex-girlfriend Vi - short for Violet? Vivian? Victoria? Whatever... - isn't thrilled either. Apparently, Tom failed to send her the memo stating that their relationship was over. So she does what any normal, curvaceous, whisky voiced chanteuse would do - she follows Tom to the island and goes Fatal Attraction on his ass. But before she can ascertain whether or not Mr. Stewart is in possession of a bunny which she can potentially boil, she falls to her death from the lighthouse railing, her body conveniently swallowed whole by the ocean. The end.

"Put her down, Jerry Lee."

Oh wait, no, we're only 5 minutes into the movie.

So Tom decides to go about his life and marry rich little Meg, played by Lugene Sanders. During her tirade, Vi throws out the fact that Meg is "quite young" implying that Tom is robbing the cradle as well as mining for gold. In real life however, Lugene was a full year older than Juli Reding, who played Vi. Carlson, born in 1912, was 22 years their senior. Susan Gordon, who was ten at the time this film was made, acts more like Tom's girlfriend than either Meg or Vi, and had a better career than most of her costars, playing the polio stricken Dorothy Nichols in The Five Pennies and appearing as the little girl who gets to leave planet earth with an alien in the Twilight Zone episode The Fugitive.

Freaky Lactose Man

But anyway...

Tom's plan to go on with his life as if nothing has happened is hampered by Vi's embittered ghost, his own guilty conscience and the arrival of a hepcat beatnik milkman who gave Vi a lift to the island on his ferry and now plans to blackmail Tom for some cash, dig? Vi's naggy ghost talks Tom into killing Mr. Freaky Lactose Man, a crime which Sandy inadvertently witnesses. Oops. Get that kid some therapy, stat. After being murdered to death, Nick the Blackmailer (as he is credited) relocated to Colorado and got a job at the Overlook Hotel, serving ghost drinks to Jack Nicholson. Upon the Overlook's immolation (read the book, you yabbos) Lloyd moved to the future and got a job as Head Honcho Ubermensch of the Tyrell Corporation, designing and creating replicants who are more human than human. And then Rutger Hauer pokes out his eyeballs with his thumbs. The end.

Oh wait no, back to Tormented.

So Tom starts getting paranoid and delusional, Sandy is showing very obvious signs of major trauma having been inflicted upon her still-inocent little psyche, which everyone ignores because Bridezilla is determined to have the perfect wedding, and World Champion Blind Lady character is almost offed by Vi's ghost when she goes snooping around the spooky old lighthouse in the films silliest Scooby Doo segment. Lillian Adams, who played Mrs. Michelin Man here, had a long and impressive career in television and worked damn near up until the day she died at the ripe old age of 89, popping up on everything from Saved By the Bell and Murphy Brown to Parks and Recreation and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Tom and Meg proceed with the wedding plans in spite of the fact that Tom is very visibly losing it, having strapped a rocket jetpack to his sanity and waving bye-bye as it rapidly descends into Cuckoo Bananaville at mach 5. As sure as shit sticks to the bathroom floor, the nuptials are rudely interrupted by Vi's ghost who, though invisible, makes her presence known to the wedding guests by wilting all of the flowers, snuffing out the candles and flipping the minister's ceremonial book to the Funerary Recitations 101 chapter. Tom wigs right out and runs off like a rabbit with a firecracker up its ass. Meg goes home to sulk, and nobody notices that Sandy is nowhere to be found. Sandy was the Carl Grimes of her day, I tellya. She's gone to the lighthouse to confront Tom, who promptly decides he has to kill her too, because she's a witness. Meanwhile, Vi is getting bored of the ghost schtick and decides she wants to go to Heaven, so she intervenes before Tom can pick up little Sandy and throw her over the railing into the sea and saves the little brats life. Tom falls and dies. The end. Oh, and Vi's dead body is found wearing the wedding ring intended for Meg. The end.

One can only assume that little Sandy checked out, dropped out and spent the remainder of the 60s smoking enough pot to paralyze a sperm whale and dropping acid whilst grooving to China Cat Sunflower on repeat and railing against the establishment. The 70s undoubtedly saw her inheriting her parents vast estate and squandering it all on Valium and Quaaludes, hanging out at Club 54 and doing lines of coke in the bathroom with Linda Lovelace. By the 80s, Sandy's savings had been depleted by Reaganomics and she got a job at the makeup counter at J.C. Penney's, eventually getting fired for failing to wear deodorant and showing up for her shift reeking of gin. Three failed marriages and two rehabs later, Sandy finally got clean and found Jesus. She now lives a modest, humble life in Burbank, working as a church secretary and devoting her free time to the Foundation for Children Unable to Attain Their Goals of Becoming Professional Magicians Due To Having Been Forced to Sublimate Horrible Secrets Deep Into Their Subconsciouses at a Tender Age.

Okay so that last part was total creative speculation on my part, and for all I know, little Sandy Hubbard lived a full and happy life, married, produced several happy, shiny-cheeked children, raised Yorkshire Terriers for fun, served as the President of the PTA and founding member of the Ladies Auxiliary Cake Decorating & Flower Arranging Club, chummed around with Martha Stewart and died a happy, fat grandma with a scrapbook filled to bursting with happy memories and kodachrome photographs.

But come on, look at her face.
She's the whole reason that Benzo's were invented.