This World, Then the Fireworks

by Michael Oblowitz

1997 Selection

UNITED STATES 1997 1h40

Feature Film

As children, Marty and Carol Lakewood saw their father commit a love-triangle killing with a violent shotgun blast, that also left, physical and emotional scars on their mother. Since that time, Marty and Carol have devotedly protected each other from the many dangers of what Marty calls “a broken world". By the late 1950’s, Marty and Carol are living in a small, California coastal town. Marly and Carol’s psychotic behavior is a chronic embarassment to their decrepit, Biblethumping, constantly nag­ging mother. Mom keeps up an apple-pie image and still hopes her children will get jobs, settle down and live the American Dream. In fact, Marty is a charming, skillful, and lethally volatile con man and stunningly beautiful Carol is an independant hooker. Marty brazenly seduces Lois Archer, a repressed police woman who erupts under his control into a lust-driven creature and an easy mark for his new grift. With a salable beach house, Lois could be Marty and Carol’s ticket out of the money scrounging life and away from their twisted mother. But the con game turns deadly, a few murder clues star crisscrossing, and the police begin to connect some dots...