An overweight lawyer is driving with his wife when he accidentally runs over a gypsy woman. He gets off thanks to a cop and a judge. However the father of the Gypsy curses the 3 of them. Now the lawyer is drastically losing weight, thanks to the curse. The cop and the judge have different curses and they kill themselves. Now the lawyer teams up with a gangster to get the gypsy to stop the curse.
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The review of this Movie prepared by Jack Bauer
If you are old enough to remember “Room 222”'s gentle principal in that 1960's TV hit, then you will marvel at Michael Constantine's performance as Tadzu Lempke, the centenarian patriarch of a roving band of gypsies. Considered unsavory nuisances whom the sheriff wants evicted, the gypsies legally lure curious onlookers. One of them, Billy Halleck (Burke), a dangerously overweight lawyer, ogles the nubile gypsy daughter (Lenz) gyrating seductively, but her unexpected vulgarity sets a sinister tone for what follows.
In this 1996 Stephen King thriller, Billy and his wife accidentally run down and kill Lempke's aged daughter after she pilfers from a drug store. However, the couple is acquitted as townsfolk “testify” in a stacked courtroom. Enraged, Lempke eerily grazes Billy while murmuring the curse, “Thinner.”
Within days, Billy credits his new “diet” for his sudden weight loss which continues at a frightful pace. The sight of him going from obese to “normal” to gaunt are truly frightening, especially as the gypsies mockingly camp nearby. Although other townsfolk are cursed in even more grotesque ways (one commits suicide), Billy realizes all are doomed unless he can reason with Lempke, man-to-man. Still, Billy is continually mocked, and flees with a near-fatal slingshot wound through his right hand.
Now, leveraging the threat of violence against Ms. Slingshot, Billy forces Lempke to reveal that the only “antidote” is to pass the curse to someone else, as deceptively as possible. With a few scores of his own to settle, including that of his unfaithful wife, Billy sets the trap, but forgets one very important detail.
The review of this Movie prepared by Angry Jim Magin
