Wonkette Movie Night: The Long Kiss Goodnight
'What I'm saying is, back when we first met, you were all like "Oh phooey, I burned the darn muffins." Now, you go into a bar, ten minutes later, sailors come runnin' out. What up with that?'
Samantha Caine has a loving boyfriend and an adorable daughter; she also has Focal Retrograde Amnesia. For the last eight years she has not known anything about her past life after waking up on a beach in New Jersey with her memory gone. She did discover she was two months pregnant. Now she is a teacher and a member of the PTA.
But her past is not going to stay quiet. Some old enemies have seen her on a TV news broadcast about a Christmas parade where Samantha is Mrs. Claus. But those enemies know her as Charly. Charly Baltimore. Little bits of memories are waking up inside her after she is in a car crash; suddenly she has newfound skills like knife handling. She is going to need those skills for when the bad guys come knocking.
Over the previous eight years Samantha had hired a few private detectives to help her discover who she really is but no one could find anything. But Mitch Henessey, a “low-rent” private eye, has stumbled onto something that will forever change both of their lives. As he arrives with this new information at her home so do the bad guys.
Spoilers ahead.
Some of those bad guys are her former employer, the CIA, who had assumed she was dead. They assumed wrong, which was their first mistake. The second was when they decided to come for her daughter, Caitlin.
The CIA assassin retirement plan sucks. Because now they want her dead. She knows too much, even though Samantha can’t remember what that is. But she is slowly figuring it out. Maybe if they’d just left her alone they might not have awakened the highly skilled killer that is Charly.
Her old CIA boss Leland Perkins would really prefer if people didn’t know he was now working with the bad guys that Charly was originally supposed to kill before losing her memory. But secrets like that are not staying buried. Because Leland is up to some really fucked up shit.
Kidnapping her daughter may get Charly to come to them but they shouldn’t have done that.
The Long Kiss Goodnight is packed with action from beginning to end but it goes to eleven with the climax. Crashing the chemical-filled truck on a bridge at Niagara Falls, she fights the unrelenting man who really wants her dead, he just can’t seem to do it. The final battle between them leaves just one of them standing. It is of course the mom.
The Long Kiss Goodnight director Renny Harlin filmed an introduction for his film that was being shown at the 2024 Forbidden Worlds Film Festival. Renny gives all the fascinating backstory and fun details of what went into making this movie.
The Long Kiss Goodnight is available for free with ads on Dailymotion. 3.99 in the usual places.
The Long Kiss Goodnight stars Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, Yvonne Zima, Brian Cox, Craig Bierko, Tom Amandes, and David Morse. Directed by Renny Harlin.
To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.
The animated short is Emersion by Howard Wimshurst.
Our next Movie Night selection is The Muppet Christmas Carol. Free on the Internet Archive. Free with subscription on Disney+. $3.99 in the usual places.
January’s schedule:
𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐔𝐒 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀:
Samuel Jackson said in a GQ interview that he read the script and really wanted the role, but the studio said it was written as a white character. Jackson then met Geena and Renny at a Christmas party, and told them that he loved the script and wanted the role, and Renny said "You want to be in my film? Then you've got it."
On the The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on January 14, 2019, Samuel L. Jackson listed Mitch as his favorite role.
This is all Geena Davis, she trained on knife skills, ice skating, fighting and gun handling skills for this flick. her and Renny Harlin were really hoping to push the female action hero theme.