Based on Welcome to Xanadu by Nathaniel Benchley, this was the ABC Friday Night Movie for October 10, 1975 and made its way to the CBS Late Movie just two years later. It was directed by former actor Lee Phillips and written by Edward Hume.
It's pretty simple. Leonard Hatch (Martin Sheen) kidnaps Doris Withers (Linda Blair) from the farm that she works on for her family. While he's a mental patient, he ends up treating her better than her family ever did, teaching her and being respectful of her boundaries, but this is also, you know, a movie about a thirty-one-year-old man kidnapping a teenage girl and her having Stockholm syndrome. 1975 was a different time. I mean, Linda Blair was 16 when this was made.
It was a big deal in Japan, where it played theaters and posters had Blair in her nightgown. She didn't want Sheen in the role and would have preferred her then-boyfriend Rick Springfield, but she ended up "falling madly in love" with the twenty-one years older actor, although they didn't have a relationship.
By the end, these two are in love, but Doris' parents and the cops can't leave them alone. It all ends as you would expect a 70s TV movie to end. Blair would go on to Exorcist II: The Heretic while Sheen would make another film where he is a menace to a teenager, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.
It's pretty simple. Leonard Hatch (Martin Sheen) kidnaps Doris Withers (Linda Blair) from the farm that she works on for her family. While he's a mental patient, he ends up treating her better than her family ever did, teaching her and being respectful of her boundaries, but this is also, you know, a movie about a thirty-one-year-old man kidnapping a teenage girl and her having Stockholm syndrome. 1975 was a different time. I mean, Linda Blair was 16 when this was made.
It was a big deal in Japan, where it played theaters and posters had Blair in her nightgown. She didn't want Sheen in the role and would have preferred her then-boyfriend Rick Springfield, but she ended up "falling madly in love" with the twenty-one years older actor, although they didn't have a relationship.
By the end, these two are in love, but Doris' parents and the cops can't leave them alone. It all ends as you would expect a 70s TV movie to end. Blair would go on to Exorcist II: The Heretic while Sheen would make another film where he is a menace to a teenager, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.