Color of Night
Bill Capa (Bruce Willis), a New York City psychoanalyst. His patient Michelle is a deeply disturbed transgender woman trying to fit into society. She had tried to commit suicide at her home by pointin…
Color of Night
Bill Capa (Bruce Willis), a New York City psychoanalyst. His patient Michelle is a deeply disturbed transgender woman trying to fit into society. She had tried to commit suicide at her home by pointing a gun to her own mouth but then went to therapy instead. During the session Capa indicates that he believes that Michelle's enemies in society are fictitious, and she makes them up so she can feel relevant. Capa falls into a deep depression after Michelle (Kathleen Wilhoite) commits suicide in front of him by jumping from his office window. Capa's office was at a high floor of a tall building. Michelle's body flies through the air for a while before splattering on the ground. The sight of the bloody body of his patient clad in a bright green dress causes Capa to suffer from psychosomatic color blindness, taking away his ability to see the color red. His friend and mentor, Dr. Larry Ashland (Jeff Corey), urges Bill to forgive himself for his patient's death. Bill tells Larry that he's going to take some time off to visit an old college buddy in California and see if that helps give him a fresh start. To restart his life, Capa travels to Los Angeles to stay with a friend, fellow therapist and best-selling author Dr. Bob Moore (Scott Bakula), who invites him to sit in on a group therapy session. Moore and Capa went to college together. Moore lives in a very well protected house with advanced security systems and a tall compound wall which is topped off with a steel fence and CCTV cameras all over. Moore admits that he has been getting death threats, and he is sure that it is someone from his Monday night group therapy session. Moore recently got divorced and is already dating another woman. Capa tends to be competitive with Moore, although this is all friendly competition. The group includes: Clark (Brad Dourif) is a lawyer who suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and insists on cleanliness and counting things. This led him to beat up his wife. Sondra Dorio (Lesley Ann Warren) is a Nymphomaniac and Kleptomaniac. She stabbed her father with a knife and fork and one of her husbands died of unnatural causes. She admits to marrying older men. Buck (Lance Henriksen) is a suicidal ex-cop. The murder of his wife and daughter remains unsolved. Casey Heinz (Kevin J. O'Connor) is the arrogant son of a wealthy man. He paints Pseudo-Masochist works of art and once burned down his father's house. Casey is supported by his father only till the time he stays in therapy. Richie is a 16-year-old with a stutter and a gender identity problem. He wants to be a woman and has a history of drug use. Richie says that he tries to speak but cannot get the words out o his mouth, unless he is on drugs. Richie gets vicious if anyone tries to make fun of his stutter. The group itself is dysfunctional, and everyone makes fun of the insecurities and flaws of everyone else. Clark is deeply bothered when Casey and Buck insist on smoking in the room and he has to open the door, which has to be at an angle of 15 degrees. Bob quizzes Bill about his impressions of his patients, he had hoped Bill could use his "tuning fork," a special intuitive sense he has for diagnosing mental illness, to determine which of them might be capable of murder. Bill wonders what Buck might be hiding and singles out Richie as a "genuine nut-case". But one night Moore is violently murdered in the office and Capa is plunged into the mystery of his friend's death. The murderer entered the office at night, when everybody was gone and brutally stabbed Moore multiple times after stalking him around the office. Moore would gather his patients every Monday for a discussion of their problems, and police detective Lt. Hector Martinez (Ruben Blades) considers them, and Capa, suspects in the murder. Hector wants Capa to take over Moore's group, but Capa says that he does not have the mental capacity to do that at that time. Hector makes Capa tell the group that Moore is dead. He wants to see if anyone changes their routine or behavior after hearing this news. The group is devastated and begs Capa to take over so that there is some level of continuity in their treatment. Capa continues to live in Moore's house and begins an affair with Rose (Jane March), a mysterious girl who comes and goes without warning into his life. Rose first meets Capa when she bangs her car into his on the roads. Rose says she has no insurance and promises to bring the money if Capa can get an estimate. As relationships develop, Capa takes over Moore's patients. Martinez debriefs Capa about the last Monday night session. Since no one confessed to Bob's murder, Martinez orders Capa to shut the group down. Capa refuses, as he's just made both a personal and professional commitment to lead the group. Martinez then reveals that he wired Bob's office and listened in on the last session. Capa returns to Bob's place to find that someone has broken in and left a hose running inside of the house, flooding the grounds. A couple of days later, Rose comes to Moore's house and, feeling a budding attraction, Capa takes her to a restaurant. After dinner, on the sidewalk near the restaurant, they kiss, but Rose leaves abruptly in a taxi, without even giving her phone number to Capa. Dale Dexter (Andrew Lowery), Richie's older brother and legal guardian, asks Bill for permission to take Richie out of therapy. Bill reminds Dale that, psychological issues aside, Richie was sentenced by the court to mandatory treatment. One morning while he is out jogging, Bill finds a live rattlesnake in his mailbox. Fortunately for him, he gets rid of it without being bitten. Rose shows up shortly afterwards and since it's their second date, they immediately have sex, first in the swimming-pool, and then in Moore's fancy bedroom. Bill inquires within the social welfare system about Richie, and discovers that, when Richie was twelve, he was treated by a psychiatrist named Dr. Niedelmeyer. Meanwhile, Sondra returns home after a shopping spree with her girlfriend Bonnie. Bonnie, who speaks with an English accent and flirts aggressively with Sondra, turns out to be Rose, Capa's lover, in a red wig and heavy make-up. Bonnie / Rose pitches a fit when Sondra tells her that Capa's on his way, then kisses Sondra on the mouth and rushes past Capa to make a quick exit. Sondra reveals to Capa that Richie was molested as a child but becomes incensed when he asks her if Richie might be violent. She screams that Clark is the one Capa should investigate. After Capa leaves, Sondra has sex with her personal trainer, a beautiful young male. Bill goes to Dale's workshop. Dale is a successful sculptor and furniture designer. The workshop itself is an old, disused iron factory that boasts a tower several stories high. Bill tells Dale that he thinks it is a bit premature to take Richie out of therapy, which clearly doesn't sit well with Dale. Bill pays a visit to Edith Niedelmeyer (Shirley Knight), Dr. Niedelmeyer's widow, but, when he mentions Richie, she slams her door in his face. Bill asks the group about their current intimate relationships. Sondra tells the group about Bonnie, whom she wishes "was a guy," Casey mentions his beautiful new model, Buck describes the sweet and innocent young woman he has met. Richie says that he only has his brother. Clark, baited by Sondra, has a meltdown in group during which he admits that he, too, has a new "somebody" in his life. Bill guesses that Clark has been seeing Sondra, and Clark goes on to say that Sondra was so jealous of his girlfriend that she attacked Clark with a butcher knife and then came back the next day and hacked his girlfriend's dress to ribbons. Clark states that Sondra is dangerous. When Bill gets back to Bob's house, he's frightened to see that someone's broken in again. He creeps around cautiously until he encounters Rose in the kitchen. She explains that she stole one of the house keys last time she was there. Bill yells at Rose that she doesn't seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation but feels bad when she breaks down in tears. They eat and then have sex again. Bill swings by Buck's place after the party and discovers that his wife and small daughter died in a car-jacking, which Buck believes might have been "payback for something." Detective Anderson (Eriq La Salle), one of Martinez's deputies, that Buck discovered that his wife was cheating on him with Martinez two days before she died. Anyone could have ordered a hit on Buck's wife, including Martinez or Buck himself. Bill has an appointment to meet Casey at his loft, but just before Bill arrives, Casey is strangled and bled to death. Bill breaks into Casey's loft when no one answers the bell. He finds the corpse and also some paintings burning in the fireplace. A face on one of the half-burnt paintings looks a bit like Bonnie. Capa himself becomes the target of several attempts on his life. Rose/Bonnie continues to lure Sondra into a sexual encounter but stops her just before things are about to get hot. Rose appears at Bob's place. She and Bill start looking at Bob's photo albums. Rose abruptly decides that she doesn't want to see any more photos and lures Bill outside to sunbathe in the garden. Later, thinking Bill's in the shower, Rose hurries to remove some pictures from the photo album, but Bill sees her. Back in the group, Clark, performing his usual counting ritual, notices that one book, which was missing a week before, is now back in place. Bill guesses that kleptomaniac Sondra stole it and asks her to show him the book. Actually, it is Moore's diary hidden inside an art book cover. In the diary, Bill finds a photo Bob snapped of Rose naked. Everyone in the group recognizes the woman in the photo as being his or her own girlfriend. Richie looks at the picture and leaves the room. Bill consults once more with his friend Larry, who questions the wisdom of pursuing a serious relationship with a woman who at best suffers from a multiple personality disorder and could also quite possibly have killed his good friend. Bill knocks on Mrs. Niedelmeyer's door again and barges in. Mrs. Niedelmeyer reluctantly tells Bill that Richie Dexter killed himself four years ago, because her husband, Richie's psychiatrist, molested him. This leads to a twist ending: "Richie" is really Rose, and the murders have been committed by her deranged brother Dale. Bill finds Rose and Dale in Dale's workshop. Rose explains that they actually had a brother named Richie who was molested by a child psychiatrist Niedelmeyer. Richie committed suicide and, unable to cope with the loss, Dale forced Rose to play the part of their brother. Dale, who was also one of Niedelmeyer's victims, began abusing Rose until she actually became "Richie". When "Richie" was arrested for drug possession, "he" was forced into therapy. Rose soon started to re-emerge and, under another personality, "Bonnie," started relationships with other members of the group. Dale explains to the captive Bill that he killed Moore because Moore was beginning to understand who Richie really was. And he killed Casey because Casey, with his painter's eyes, would eventually perceive that "Bonnie" and "Richie" were the same person. Dale kidnaps Rose and tries to kill Capa and Martinez with a nail gun when he arrives to rescue them. Bill touches a nerve in Dale when he uses his "tuning fork" to figure out that Dale's obsession with turning Rose into Richie must stem from his guilt over having allowed Niedelmeyer to treat Richie, knowing that Niedelmeyer was a sexual predator due to the fact that Niedelmeyer had previously molested Dale himself. At the last moment, however, Rose frees herself and kills Dale. Deeply traumatized, she tries to commit suicide, but Capa convinces her to keep living. This bookends the story with two suicide attempts, one at the beginning, resulting in Capa's loss of color vision, and one at the end, thwarted and resulting in his regaining it. As they kiss, Capa regains the ability to see the color red.
Color of Night
Drama,Mystery,Romance
Film Details
Bill Capa (Bruce Willis), a New York City psychoanalyst. His patient Michelle is a deeply disturbed transgender woman trying to fit into society. She had tried to commit suicide at her home by pointing a gun to her own mouth but then went to therapy instead.
During the session Capa indicates that he believes that Michelle's enemies in society are fictitious, and she makes them up so she can feel relevant. Capa falls into a deep depression after Michelle (Kathleen Wilhoite) commits suicide in front of him by jumping from his office window. Capa's office was at a high floor of a tall building.
Michelle's body flies through the air for a while before splattering on the ground. The sight of the bloody body of his patient clad in a bright green dress causes Capa to suffer from psychosomatic color blindness, taking away his ability to see the color red. His friend and mentor, Dr.
Larry Ashland (Jeff Corey), urges Bill to forgive himself for his patient's death. Bill tells Larry that he's going to take some time off to visit an old college buddy in California and see if that helps give him a fresh start. To restart his life, Capa travels to Los Angeles to stay with a friend, fellow therapist and best-selling author Dr.
Bob Moore (Scott Bakula), who invites him to sit in on a group therapy session. Moore and Capa went to college together. Moore lives in a very well protected house with advanced security systems and a tall compound wall which is topped off with a steel fence and CCTV cameras all over.
Moore admits that he has been getting death threats, and he is sure that it is someone from his Monday night group therapy session. Moore recently got divorced and is already dating another woman. Capa tends to be competitive with Moore, although this is all friendly competition.
The group includes: Clark (Brad Dourif) is a lawyer who suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and insists on cleanliness and counting things. This led him to beat up his wife. Sondra Dorio (Lesley Ann Warren) is a Nymphomaniac and Kleptomaniac.
She stabbed her father with a knife and fork and one of her husbands died of unnatural causes. She admits to marrying older men. Buck (Lance Henriksen) is a suicidal ex-cop.
The murder of his wife and daughter remains unsolved. Casey Heinz (Kevin J. O'Connor) is the arrogant son of a wealthy man.
He paints Pseudo-Masochist works of art and once burned down his father's house. Casey is supported by his father only till the time he stays in therapy. Richie is a 16-year-old with a stutter and a gender identity problem.
He wants to be a woman and has a history of drug use. Richie says that he tries to speak but cannot get the words out o his mouth, unless he is on drugs. Richie gets vicious if anyone tries to make fun of his stutter.
The group itself is dysfunctional, and everyone makes fun of the insecurities and flaws of everyone else. Clark is deeply bothered when Casey and Buck insist on smoking in the room and he has to open the door, which has to be at an angle of 15 degrees. Bob quizzes Bill about his impressions of his patients, he had hoped Bill could use his "tuning fork," a special intuitive sense he has for diagnosing mental illness, to determine which of them might be capable of murder.
Bill wonders what Buck might be hiding and singles out Richie as a "genuine nut-case". But one night Moore is violently murdered in the office and Capa is plunged into the mystery of his friend's death. The murderer entered the office at night, when everybody was gone and brutally stabbed Moore multiple times after stalking him around the office.
Moore would gather his patients every Monday for a discussion of their problems, and police detective Lt. Hector Martinez (Ruben Blades) considers them, and Capa, suspects in the murder. Hector wants Capa to take over Moore's group, but Capa says that he does not have the mental capacity to do that at that time.
Hector makes Capa tell the group that Moore is dead. He wants to see if anyone changes their routine or behavior after hearing this news. The group is devastated and begs Capa to take over so that there is some level of continuity in their treatment.
Capa continues to live in Moore's house and begins an affair with Rose (Jane March), a mysterious girl who comes and goes without warning into his life. Rose first meets Capa when she bangs her car into his on the roads. Rose says she has no insurance and promises to bring the money if Capa can get an estimate.
As relationships develop, Capa takes over Moore's patients. Martinez debriefs Capa about the last Monday night session. Since no one confessed to Bob's murder, Martinez orders Capa to shut the group down.
Capa refuses, as he's just made both a personal and professional commitment to lead the group. Martinez then reveals that he wired Bob's office and listened in on the last session. Capa returns to Bob's place to find that someone has broken in and left a hose running inside of the house, flooding the grounds.
A couple of days later, Rose comes to Moore's house and, feeling a budding attraction, Capa takes her to a restaurant. After dinner, on the sidewalk near the restaurant, they kiss, but Rose leaves abruptly in a taxi, without even giving her phone number to Capa. Dale Dexter (Andrew Lowery), Richie's older brother and legal guardian, asks Bill for permission to take Richie out of therapy.
Bill reminds Dale that, psychological issues aside, Richie was sentenced by the court to mandatory treatment. One morning while he is out jogging, Bill finds a live rattlesnake in his mailbox. Fortunately for him, he gets rid of it without being bitten.
Rose shows up shortly afterwards and since it's their second date, they immediately have sex, first in the swimming-pool, and then in Moore's fancy bedroom. Bill inquires within the social welfare system about Richie, and discovers that, when Richie was twelve, he was treated by a psychiatrist named Dr. Niedelmeyer.
Meanwhile, Sondra returns home after a shopping spree with her girlfriend Bonnie. Bonnie, who speaks with an English accent and flirts aggressively with Sondra, turns out to be Rose, Capa's lover, in a red wig and heavy make-up. Bonnie / Rose pitches a fit when Sondra tells her that Capa's on his way, then kisses Sondra on the mouth and rushes past Capa to make a quick exit.
Sondra reveals to Capa that Richie was molested as a child but becomes incensed when he asks her if Richie might be violent. She screams that Clark is the one Capa should investigate. After Capa leaves, Sondra has sex with her personal trainer, a beautiful young male.
Bill goes to Dale's workshop. Dale is a successful sculptor and furniture designer. The workshop itself is an old, disused iron factory that boasts a tower several stories high.
Bill tells Dale that he thinks it is a bit premature to take Richie out of therapy, which clearly doesn't sit well with Dale. Bill pays a visit to Edith Niedelmeyer (Shirley Knight), Dr. Niedelmeyer's widow, but, when he mentions Richie, she slams her door in his face.
Bill asks the group about their current intimate relationships. Sondra tells the group about Bonnie, whom she wishes "was a guy," Casey mentions his beautiful new model, Buck describes the sweet and innocent young woman he has met. Richie says that he only has his brother.
Clark, baited by Sondra, has a meltdown in group during which he admits that he, too, has a new "somebody" in his life. Bill guesses that Clark has been seeing Sondra, and Clark goes on to say that Sondra was so jealous of his girlfriend that she attacked Clark with a butcher knife and then came back the next day and hacked his girlfriend's dress to ribbons. Clark states that Sondra is dangerous.
When Bill gets back to Bob's house, he's frightened to see that someone's broken in again. He creeps around cautiously until he encounters Rose in the kitchen. She explains that she stole one of the house keys last time she was there.
Bill yells at Rose that she doesn't seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation but feels bad when she breaks down in tears. They eat and then have sex again. Bill swings by Buck's place after the party and discovers that his wife and small daughter died in a car-jacking, which Buck believes might have been "payback for something." Detective Anderson (Eriq La Salle), one of Martinez's deputies, that Buck discovered that his wife was cheating on him with Martinez two days before she died.
Anyone could have ordered a hit on Buck's wife, including Martinez or Buck himself. Bill has an appointment to meet Casey at his loft, but just before Bill arrives, Casey is strangled and bled to death. Bill breaks into Casey's loft when no one answers the bell.
He finds the corpse and also some paintings burning in the fireplace. A face on one of the half-burnt paintings looks a bit like Bonnie. Capa himself becomes the target of several attempts on his life.
Rose/Bonnie continues to lure Sondra into a sexual encounter but stops her just before things are about to get hot. Rose appears at Bob's place. She and Bill start looking at Bob's photo albums.
Rose abruptly decides that she doesn't want to see any more photos and lures Bill outside to sunbathe in the garden. Later, thinking Bill's in the shower, Rose hurries to remove some pictures from the photo album, but Bill sees her. Back in the group, Clark, performing his usual counting ritual, notices that one book, which was missing a week before, is now back in place.
Bill guesses that kleptomaniac Sondra stole it and asks her to show him the book. Actually, it is Moore's diary hidden inside an art book cover. In the diary, Bill finds a photo Bob snapped of Rose naked.
Everyone in the group recognizes the woman in the photo as being his or her own girlfriend. Richie looks at the picture and leaves the room. Bill consults once more with his friend Larry, who questions the wisdom of pursuing a serious relationship with a woman who at best suffers from a multiple personality disorder and could also quite possibly have killed his good friend.
Bill knocks on Mrs. Niedelmeyer's door again and barges in. Mrs.
Niedelmeyer reluctantly tells Bill that Richie Dexter killed himself four years ago, because her husband, Richie's psychiatrist, molested him. This leads to a twist ending: "Richie" is really Rose, and the murders have been committed by her deranged brother Dale. Bill finds Rose and Dale in Dale's workshop.
Rose explains that they actually had a brother named Richie who was molested by a child psychiatrist Niedelmeyer. Richie committed suicide and, unable to cope with the loss, Dale forced Rose to play the part of their brother. Dale, who was also one of Niedelmeyer's victims, began abusing Rose until she actually became "Richie".
When "Richie" was arrested for drug possession, "he" was forced into therapy. Rose soon started to re-emerge and, under another personality, "Bonnie," started relationships with other members of the group. Dale explains to the captive Bill that he killed Moore because Moore was beginning to understand who Richie really was.
And he killed Casey because Casey, with his painter's eyes, would eventually perceive that "Bonnie" and "Richie" were the same person. Dale kidnaps Rose and tries to kill Capa and Martinez with a nail gun when he arrives to rescue them. Bill touches a nerve in Dale when he uses his "tuning fork" to figure out that Dale's obsession with turning Rose into Richie must stem from his guilt over having allowed Niedelmeyer to treat Richie, knowing that Niedelmeyer was a sexual predator due to the fact that Niedelmeyer had previously molested Dale himself.
At the last moment, however, Rose frees herself and kills Dale. Deeply traumatized, she tries to commit suicide, but Capa convinces her to keep living. This bookends the story with two suicide attempts, one at the beginning, resulting in Capa's loss of color vision, and one at the end, thwarted and resulting in his regaining it.
As they kiss, Capa regains the ability to see the color red..