- Karen and Greg were childhood sweethearts. Twelve-year-old Karen mysteriously disappears on her way to Greg's house. Seventeen years later, a woman claiming to be Karen shows up outside Greg's window. She tells Greg that she was abducted by a man who kept her prisoner for years. Greg and Karen's mother are convinced that this woman is Karen. However, Karen's father and the police detective who has been searching for Karen all these years have their doubts. A small-town sheriff contacts the police detective and says the woman claiming to be Karen may be wanted for murder.—PetrinaC <cubit@aol.com>
- Greg Davis (Michael Reilly Burke) is a young man haunted by the disappearance of his best friend, Karen Carlson. When Karen was 12, she was on her way to Greg's house, and never arrived-- and now, quite a few years later when Greg is in his early 20's, there has never been any trace of Karen. The only memento Greg has of Karen is a locket he had given her as a token of teenage affection.
Greg is still good friends with Karen's parents, Rose (Barbara Babcock) and Warren (Ronny Cox). Both Rose and Warren are likewise still haunted by the memory of their lost daughter. We see Greg talking about a unique way Karen had of contacting him when she went to his house-- she would stand under the window to his room and lob small pebbles up at it to attract his attention.
Greg is in his house late one evening, preparing for bed. It is raining very heavily outside. Suddenly Greg hears a light sound of something hitting against his window... something heavier than just the rain. He hears the sound a second time, and then a third time. He goes to window and there underneath it, stands a young adult woman with long red hair (Melissa Gilbert) throwing pebbles at the window to attract his attention. He goes outside and the woman seems to know him... she says she is Karen.
Greg lets her stay on his couch that night and brings her to Rose and Warren the next day. Slowly word starts to get around that Karen has turned up alive after missing for many years. The tale she tells Greg is harrowing and frightening. She was kidnapped on her way to his house by a man named Riker (Buck McDancer, shown only in memory flashbacks). Riker held her captive in the basement of his house. He was cruel, abusive, and treated her like property. She has escaped from him now, many years later, only after he passed away, and finally found her way back to her home town.
Rose and Warren bring Karen back to their house and up to what was once her room. She lights up at once as she looks around it, and seems very much at home. However, Warren is uncomfortable and awkward around Karen-- there is something about the woman that makes him uneasy.
More details around Karen's ordeal as Riker's captive surface when she is sleeping in Greg's house one night and suddenly wakes from a nightmare calling out a name-- Lynnell (Melissa Lozoff, also shown only in memory flashbacks). When Greg asks her about it, Karen explains that Lynnell was Riker's daughter, and yet he treated her no better than he treated Karen. Lynnell was basically held prisoner in the basement of Riker's house along with Karen. For many years, Lynnell was Karen's only friend and confidant, and without Lynnell, Karen would never have survived. Tragically, Riker eventually killed Lynnell shortly before his own death.
The town holds an event to celebrate Karen's safe return-- in stark contrast to the case of so many missing children who are never found, or are found slain. A photo of the event, showing Karen with Greg, is posted in the community newspaper.
Warren, Karen's father, and Lt. James Walker (Leon Russom) are the only people in the community who disbelieve Karen's ordeal-- and her identity. They believe she is an impostor, though they cannot figure out why she is supposedly impersonating Karen. One day Warren confronts her on it and they argue bitterly. Warren's key point is when he and Rose took Karen up to her room in their house and she said, "It's just how I imagined it" instead of "It's just how I remembered it." Karen defends herself desperately. Warren finally storms off after asking her one final time, "Who ARE you?" and Karen tearfully exclaims (to herself, more than anyone else), "I'm Karen... I'm KAREN."
But then, Lt. Walker is contacted by Sheriff Bowman (Ed Lauter), the sheriff of the small town where Riker lived and allegedly held Karen captive. Bowman has seen the photo of Karen and Greg from the town event celebrating her return, and recognizes her. There is not enough evidence for him to seek a warrant, but Bowman is suspicious. It is believed that Karen-- or the woman claiming to be Karen-- may be responsible for a murder in the town.
Looking to help with the mystery, Greg travels to the town. He walks through the cemetery and stands before Riker's grave, seething with anger. Beside his grave is a smaller headstone, for another grave, overgrown and unkempt. On the headstone is the name Lynnell Riker.
Greg's investigation in the town must be cut short when Karen and Rose contact him with urgent, terrible news-- Warren has suddenly died. Everyone is paying respects and grieving at Warren's funeral, and suddenly Karen passes out and collapses.
Shortly after she's recovered, Karen is given her old locket by Greg. She recognizes it immediately and it brings her comfort, and calms her.
Another twist in the story emerges when Greg and Sheriff Bowman speak with a woman whose very young daughter was almost kidnapped by a man matching Riker's description, outside a mall. The woman's daughter was saved by the intervention of a young-adult woman. Preoccupied with getting her daughter away from the kidnapper, the woman only remembers that the lady who intervened was engaged in a vicious heated argument with the alleged abductor. The woman has given a description of the young lady that saved her daughter, and it resembles Karen. Greg shows the woman the photo of the community event where he and Karen were photographed together. The mother looks at the photograph and says without a doubt, Karen is the young lady who saved her daughter. The mother wishes she could meet Karen and thank her for what she did.
Bowman and Lt. Walker manage to get a warrant to have the bodies of Riker and Lynnell exhumed. However, the only way to positively determine whether Karen is truly Karen, is to have positive DNA samples from Karen herself at her current age-- and from when she was 12, before she disappeared. Miraculously, Greg does have both. He takes the locket and opens it. Hidden behind a small photograph in the locket, showing the young 12-year-od Karen and Greg together, is a lock of Karen's hair, placed in the locket before she disappeared. He then gives Karen's hairbrush from his bathroom, which has strands of her hair.
Greg arrives home where Karen is waiting. Calmly he suddenly asks her, "You're not Karen, are you?" And with equal calm, she looks at him and says that she is not Karen-- Karen is dead. Greg knows from all of the cross DNA samples that "Karen" is actually Lynnell. The hair sample from the locket matched the body in Lynnell's grave, and not the sample from the hairbrush Lynnell had recently used. Throughout their multi-year ordeal of captivity and terror, Karen and Lynnell were the closest of confidantes and Lynnell eventually came to know everything about Karen's life-- except the lock of hair secreted in the locket. That token of affection was a sacred secret between Karen and Greg-- the one and only thing that Karen never told Lynnell about.
Lynnell's tale reveals that Riker had actually killed Karen at the time she originally claimed (speaking as Karen) that he had killed Lynnell. The friendship and bond between the two girls had grown by then to the point that Lynnell, traumatized past the breaking point, essentially became Karen and genuinely believed with every erg of her will that she was, in fact, Karen. Hence after Riker's death, she did what Karen would have done-- found her way back home and gone to Greg's house, tossing the pebbles at his window just as Karen had told Lynnell she used to do.
It was Warren's sudden death that finally jolted her back to reality-- hence why she fainted during his funeral-- it was her long-repressed memories of who she truly was, rushing back to the surface. Lynnell recounts her stopping Riker from trying to kidnap a very small, young child outside a mall. Shortly after that, Riker snapped and tried to kill Lynnell herself. As she speaks, Lynnell picks up a long kitchen knife, starting to relive her struggle with Riker as he attempted to kill her. Lynnell suddenly raises the knife above her head, intent on killing herself. Greg seizes her arms and they grapple over the weapon, Lynnell starting to become frenzied as she relives her struggle with Riker-- she killed Riker in the struggle. Greg is wounded in the arm, though not badly, and Lynnell drops the weapons and sobs.
It is morning, and Greg has been bandaged up by arriving EMT's, and the police and Sheriff Bowman plan not to pursue any charges against Lynnell-- they are satisfied that her killing Riker was self-defense. Greg and Lynnell are talking, and Greg tells her that even though she is not Karen, she has brought a wholeness to his life even beyond the teenage crush he had shared with Karen. This pleases Lynnell and she says she is glad to be who she truly is.
Suddenly Greg pulls a shocker and tells Lynnell that, contrary to what she had believed her whole life, she is not Riker's daughter. Her DNA sample from her hairbrush, compared with Riker's DNA, proved this conclusively. Riker, a lifelong pedophile and child abuser, had likely abducted Lynnell when she was too young to remember anything of her true family and parents. The revelation shakes Lynnell and leaves her with new questions to pursue... but she has a stable starting point with Greg. The movie closes with Greg and Lynnell stepping outside the house where Rose is waiting. As Rose embraces Lynnell in a gentle hug, the camera pans back into the house and fixes on an old photograph of Karen and Greg as 12-year-olds.
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Top Gap
By what name was Childhood Sweetheart? (1997) officially released in Canada in English?
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