SPOILERS galoreSo it's a lazy Sunday morning and I'm half asleep with the TV on and all of a sudden a new movie starts and I hear Melissa Manchester. That woke me up enough to see the opening credits to a movie called "The Promise". Starring Kathleen Quinlan, one of those actresses from the 70s and 80s that you'd recognize but wouldn't know her name. The movie starts and it's a montage of YOUNG LOVE. However, I was like "That's not Kathleen Quinlan is it? I thought she was prettier than that!" Well, I'll get to that in a bit. But she had these impossible buck teeth that she couldn't close her mouth or speak normally, a fake nose appliance, and a poorly fitting wig that looks like something from John Waters' Hairspray. Anyway, the story is this: Young love meets up against boy's domineering wealthy mother. The couple decides to elope anyway and on the way their 1976 BMW gets in a head on collision with a MAC truck. Boy gets banged up, and girl has her face destroyed. The evil mother makes a deal with girl that she will pay for her extensive plastic surgery so long as she never speaks to her son ever again. Okay... Mother tells her son that girl died in the wreck, and THIS is when the film gets unbelievable... Girl comes out of surgery looking like Kathleen Quinlan with a fashionable hairstyle and duds. ONE YEAR LATER the two lovebirds randomly meet up and he doesn't recognize her! (I was constantly wondering why he just randomly accepted her death without trying to find her gravesite or a death certificate, but I was thinking too much, not a good thing for this movie). Anyway, yada yada yada, in a "An Affair to Remember" throwback, he realizes that she is actually his love that he made "The Promise" to that he would never say goodbye (they kept playing that song over and over and over that I started getting annoyed by it). The ending is that they get back together and kiss, and goddangit my eyes started watering. I'm cynical as hell, but dang I am easy prey for a schlocky, impossibly manipulative chick flick. I made it through the entire film, so that's worth 5 out of ten.My complaints: Basically the film is so implausible and unrealistic that you really have to suspend disbelief to a level not known before to swallow this one. Bladerunner is more realistic. But here's the thing, loverboy did not recognize his lovergirl after only one year! She had plastic surgery, but she didn't have a personality transplant too! I mean, come on, if I got into a disastrous accident and had plastic surgery, I would expect my partner to recognize me with a new nose, teeth, and hairdo. I still have the same eyes, voice, mannerisms, and well, everything that makes me me. Anyway, don't try to overthink this one. It really could work in a campy way, and having Melissa Manchester belting out every now and then is a hoot. Her voice is special, but at the saddest and sweetest part of the film, her booming voice was shocking and distracting to the final scene. Melissa Manchester was to this song as Faye Dunaway was to Mommie Dearest, total overkill!!! Not worth your time unless you are trying to get out of bed and looking for a reason not to...

I'm giving this title a 10, but not the kind of 10 I'd give to a movie like, say, "Wizard of Oz," or "Casablanca" or "Double Indemnity." No, I'm giving "The Promise" a 10 for its camp and for its camp alone. It's a mother-lode of camp is what it is. From the beginning through the middle to the end. And for that, I believe it deserves a 10.That's all I'd need say about The Promise but that IMDb.com insists my review have ten lines of text? Really? Why? Five lines, sure; but ten? So what am I supposed to write about now? Well, let's see, this movie "Stars" Stephen Douglas and Karen Quinlann (sp?) and a woman who really had some acting chops but somehow found her self in this dreck: one Miss Beatrice Straight. Okay, is that ten lines yet?

The story isn't really unique, but it's the assemblage of players that makes it work so well. It's a love story, a story of deceit and a story of revenge, of sorts, that relies on more than one promise. The beginning is a montage that shows the viewer the uncomplicated, yet intense, love between two young college students. Enter the complication, a near-fatal car crash.Then, enter mother. Beatrice Straight plays "matron" so well, it almost creeps one out. Authoritative, hard, selfish. One has to believe that the two lovers, Nancy (Kathleen Quinlan) and Michael (Stephen Collins) just couldn't be stopped had the car accident not shattered their lives. Fate intervened, choices had to be made, situations were controlled with undeniable uncaring. But life has a way of stepping in; destiny will not be driven from its path. The cast is perfect and the music is obvious, but not intrusive. This is a film I've watched several times and have never been disappointed in.

This is my all time favorite romantic movie, along with "Random Harvest" with Ronald Coleman, and Greer Garson, I still get goose bumps at certain points in this movie, and I have seen it over 10 times. It has a wonderful ending, but I wished they didn't pan the camera away at the end. Good tears are a guarantee If you like this movie check out Random Harvest.