Taste of Fear
** CONTAINS SPOILERSIn England, OFFICIALS drag a lake, soon locating the body of a YOUNG GIRL, apparently a suicideIn Nice, France, handsome, sexy chauffeur, BOB, dutifully arrives at the airport to pick up PENNY APPLEBY, late teens or 20s. Confined to a wheelchair since a long-ago horse riding accident, Penny has come to stay with her FATHER and stepmother, JANE, whom she has never met.Her stepmother greets her warmly, but tells Penny that her Father is away on business. They dine elegantly at the lavish estate, and then retire. That night, Penny hears strange noises. She maneuvers her wheelchair outside to the summer house, where candlelight flickers. Penny goes inside, only to find her Father's CORPSE, sitting upright in a chair! Horrified, Penny races out of the summer house in her wheelchair, ending up in the pool, rescued by Bob.She wakes up to find DR. GERRARD tending to her. Although she insists what she saw was real, a trip to the summer house fails to reveal a body. Penny broods about it, and then finds herself confused when stepmother Jane calls her to the phone to talk with her Father, who, apparently, is just fine.But Penny finds an apparently sympathetic ear in the attractive chauffeur Bob. When Penny runs into her Father's CORPSE yet again, this time sitting upright in his study, Penny wonders if she's going mad. Penny begins to suspect her stepmother Jane and Dr. Gerrard. She's convinced they're having an affair and that they've killed her father, hiding his body somewhere in the house.With chauffeur Bob now an ally, Penny and Bob decide the body must be hidden somewhere in the house. Late at night, they locate a meat freezer, but when Bob pries it open, they do not find her Father's body. Only later, staring at the swimming pool, does Penny realize that the body might be kept down in the icy water. Bob dives into it, swimming through the weed-infested water, and indeed he sees the old man's dead eyes staring at him from his watery grave.Now, Penny and Bob decide to drive to the authorities, as Jane has left for the evening. Bob places Penny in the backseat of the limo and they start out. On a deserted road, they see Jane. Bob gets out of the car to talk to her, but the car begins to roll with Penny helpless in the backseat. Panicked, Penny leans across the seat to stop the car, and then sees her Father's CORPSE slumped down in the front seat. She screams before the car plunges into the waterBob and Jane, secretly lovers, have watched the whole accident. It was all a plot to make it appear as though Penny and her Father died in the same car accident, thus getting the estate for themselves.Jane gets a visit from her Father's SOLICITOR. When she inquires about the chain of inheritance, since both the Father and Penny were killed, the Solicitor is surprised. He says there was only ONE body in the car - the Father. Further, he tells Jane that Penny committed suicide three weeks ago!!A shocked Jane is confused. Before the Solicitor leaves, he points out the young girl at the edge of the cliff outside the house who's sitting in a wheelchair!Jane goes up to the wheelchair, and indeed it's Penny, still alive. But Penny reveals that she is not Penny at all. She is Penny's best friend, EMILY FRENCHEM. She's also not paralyzed, rising out of the wheelchair. Penny is the girl who committed suicide in France, the one whose body they dragged out at the beginning of the movie. Emily knew something was wrong at the estate because Penny's Father had called his daughter about it. That's why Emily came investigating, and now she knows the truth-Penny's Stepmother Jane and the Chauffeur murdered Penny's Father. Emily had aligned herself with Dr. Gerrard to trick Jane and Bob into revealing their guilt. She was able to leap from the car before it plunged into the water.Emily walks off to call the police, Jane sits wearily in the wheelchair. In the meantime, Bob, having found out Penny's alive, rushes into the house, searching for Penny. He sees the wheelchair, kicks it off the cliff, but, of course, it's Jane who falls to her death. Police arrest Bob. Dr. Gerrard comforts Emily, who has vindicated her friend, the tragic Penny
murder