# The Official " Identify from a vague desciption" thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 20, 2002, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690 "2002-09-20T00:52:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2002, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/61 "2002-09-24T16:44:08Z")
OK I got one, from I movie I saw on HBO in the 80s. It’s mainly about this woman who spends the movie getting into trouble. I think it takes place in Europe. The woman wears a red cocktail dress and high heels, I think. In the scene I remember, she’s really doped up on drugs and is trying to escape some really bad situation, and this big fat hairy bald guy says he’ll help her in exchange for sex. I think he tried to pick her up before in the movie, but she blew him off. This time, she’s so desperate, she goes with him. As he’s driving, she sitting in the backseat, and he keeps telling her what he’s going to do with her. She just smiles and says, sure, obviously wanting this to be over with. At one point, the guy grabs his woodie and turns around to show her, then he crashes into another car. He gets out, sees the other driver is really banged up and slowly bleeding to death, and decides he better drive him to the hospital, but he still wants sex! So he drags the guy into his car and drives over to his house. The last scene I remember is that the BFHB guy props up in the injured driver in the corner and then has sex with the woman on his ratty bed as the other guy watches and slowly dies. Strike any chords with anybody? ---
**Author:** ![Gundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Gundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gundy)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2002, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/62 "2002-09-24T17:46:12Z")
Motorgirl, you might be right about Lois Duncan. It feels right. ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2002, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/63 "2002-09-24T19:35:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mysphyt \* > \*\*The more specific I can actually narrow down to author. It’s a Terry Pratchett book I would have sworn several times was in the Discworld series. I started reading it in seventh grade (around eight years ago), couldn’t get into it, and stopped. It included a footnote about spelling and magic; specifically about a genie who gave someone the power to turn things into glod, and about how this dwarf named Glod kept getting whisked off to places unknown. I say I would have sworn it was in the Discworld series, but I’ve now read [every listed Discworld book](http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html) up to _The Last Hero_ (which just came out and has not to my knowledge been published in the States yet), and have not yet found it. Again, any guesses? \*\* You can’t have been paying attention, then. From the quotes section of [lspace.org](http://lspace.org): > [@](#): > > Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Yabi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Yabi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered. > > – (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) ---
**Author:** ![Kn\_ckers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/96bed5/32.png) [@Kn\_ckers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kn_ckers)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2002, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/64 "2002-09-24T19:42:06Z")
Can’t help anybody. If I knew \*\* Knowed Out \*\* 's movie, I don’t think I’d want to!! Here’s my vague description, and it probably applies to about a thousand movies, but maybe someone will be able to figure out which: Black and white film, most likely from the 40s, but I couldn’t pin it down for you (I was about 6 when I saw it, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the production date). Romance, possibly starring Katherine Hepburn. The only scene I remember is the final one, in which the main character (who may or may not have been K. H.), is in a sitting room, with a female friend or servant, and tells the other woman she has a pain in her left arm and doesn’t feel well, so the woman brings her some warm milk. Predictably, she has a heart attack, and the milk falls out of her hand and crashes on the floor. The film doesn’t end there, though. The woman’s ghost gets up an walks out the door into bright light, and she may or may not have been accompanied by the love interest’s ghost (I’m foggy on that part). So, yeah. Anybody remember any old movies involving warm milk and heart attacks? ---
**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/65 "2002-09-25T04:01:54Z")
This one is for the cyberpunk fans out there. In the early 90s I tired of the similar plots in nearly every “classic” sci-fi and fantasy book I read, so I decided to chance cyberpunk/steampunk. I read maybe 10 books before turning to another genre I enjoyed more. The book I remember wasn’t written particularly well, but it had an event in it which nearly 100% of stories and movies these days don’t have: the good guy dies halfway through the book, rather ignobly so, and doesn’t come back somewhere in the last half (a la Obi Wan Kenobi) to help save the day. What I remember: I think it was most certainly by one of the Big Three cyberpunk authors (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, or Bruce Sterling), but reviews on Amazon don’t address the bits I remember. I could be wrong about the author. The book was in circulation in the early 90s. The main characters in the book were three roommates, two male and one female. One guy is rather nerdy and insecure, the other is a porn star, smooth, rugged, handsome, very self-secure and apparently every girl’s wet dream (and also the one that dies mid-story). Don’t remember any characteristics of the female. The porn star regularly shared the beds with each of his roommates and the nerdy guy was a bit jealous of the female over this point as he didn’t get as much “porn time” as she did. Some sort of street waif gets dumped into their lives and the story revolves around how they try to help her out of her predicament (whatever it might have been). ---
**Author:** ![Cougarfang](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c67d28/32.png) [@Cougarfang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cougarfang)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/66 "2002-09-25T11:25:48Z")
Okay, lets see how much of this I remember… There’s this music video, and I don’t remember the song or singer. It starts out with a long line of soldiers with those rectangular shield thingies, apparently blocking the way of some refugees. The singer (she’s a long-haired blonde Caucasian) appears as one of the soldiers, and then changes into a refugee, and keeps melding in and out of people shown in the video. One of them is this Arabic-looking girl in full-body veil, and another is this ancient old lady. It ends something like the singer is the soldier again, and she’s kneeling and hugging the refugee who is wrapped in a blanket. I saw it on a plane flight, and it’s been nipping at the corners of my mind ever since… ---
**Author:** ![Morgainelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Morgainelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgainelf)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/67 "2002-09-25T16:16:20Z")
**Cat Fight** , I remember both books you describe. The second one is definitely the one I was talking about. If you think of the title, please let me know! **Tars Tarkas** , that wasn’t it. That book was written in 1991 - I should have mentioned that I read it around 1978. **Horseflesh** , I called my mother and she remembers the book too, but couldn’t recall the title. I’m sorry about your grandma - my grandfather had Alzheimers. It sucks. And **haardvark** , I have _Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster_\* on my coffee table right now. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Amidar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@Amidar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amidar)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/68 "2002-09-25T16:44:47Z")
OK, here’s one that’s been bugging me for years now… It was an animated TV movie, about a baseball game on a spaceship. One of the teams–the ‘bad guys,’ as it were–is made up of either robots or aliens, whose heads seemed to consist mostly of a grinning mouth, and a (red?) baseball cap. At one point the aliens/robots are winning so handily that the commentator points out that the aliens are “laughing their heads off,” and in fact the aliens are laughing so hard that their heads are falling off. The aliens are using all sorts of dirty tricks to win, but the protagonists (about whom I remember nothing) pull off a come-from-behind victory. I know it wasn’t a short–I remember it being at least an hour long, and being shown more than once. It could not have been any later than 1982. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![Mystery\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f14d63/32.png) [@Mystery\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mystery_Dog)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/69 "2002-09-25T17:38:11Z")
I can’t answer any of the ones that have been posted yet, but I’m going to submit two more items in hopes that someone can identify them. First, a book that was in my junior high school library circa 1984 (definitely not later than 1985). I skimmed through the first chapter, but never read the whole thing. It was a sci-fi book dealing with a game played in a virtual reality environment (though I don’t think the term “virtual reality” was used). Two players would enter an environment which a computer created by tapping into one player’s subconscious. The environment looked incredibly realistic to the players, since it matched perfectly with their subconscious ideas of what the environment _should_ look like. The game was a sort of virtual-reality laser tag; each player had a gun and tried to find and “kill” the other within the environment. When one shot the other, the game program ended and the players returned to reality, unharmed. In the first chapter, two men were playing in an environment that resembled a bucolic small town. According to the story description on the inside dust jacket, the program would later malfunction, with people trapped inside, and dying for real when they “died” in the game. Second, a horror movie that I saw on television in the early 1980’s. The movie was in color, and I suspect it was made in the 1960’s. The first scene shows a young couple waking up and getting dressed on the day they were moving to a small town. When they get to their new home, all sorts of horrible events happen, but I can’t remember the details. At the end, the bad guys (possibly a satanic cult or coven of witches) have the wife cornered and are about to kill her when, POOF!, she wakes up, and it was all a dream. But she wakes up next to her husband, on the day they are about to move to a small town, and everything starts to happen exactly in the first scene. The wife screams in horror, knowing what lies ahead of them. Freeze frame, The End. Anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2002, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/70 "2002-09-25T19:29:58Z")
**Mystery Dog** - I remember that book too. I think I even remember what the cover looked like. I think I read it all the way through. IIRC, it was one of those shlocky book-a-month teen horror novels. I didn’t normally read that stuff but I was really into computers at the time and it sounded a lot the same kind of thing parent organizations were saying about D & D at the time: that kids were taking their characters roles too seriously and somebody was going to get hurt or killed. Can’t think of the title at the moment but I might still have it in my piles of books somewhere. The movie I think you’re describing is [Necromancy](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0068994). The user comments on that page pretty much match up with what you describe but they don’t spoil the ending (I believe she wakes up from her dream and everything becomes real as you describe). Not a really good horror movie but it stuck with me because the way they depicted the woman being buried alive in order to raise someone from the dead. Gosh that creeped me out. ---
**Author:** ![TPWombat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbce88/32.png) [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/71 "2002-09-26T11:32:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Knowed Out \* > \*\*It’s mainly about this woman who spends the movie getting into trouble. I think it takes place in Europe. The woman wears a red cocktail dress and high heels, I think. In the scene I remember, she’s really doped up on drugs and is trying to escape some really bad situation, and this big fat hairy bald guy says he’ll help her in exchange for sex. I think he tried to pick her up before in the movie, but she blew him off. This time, she’s so desperate, she goes with him… > …Strike any chords with anybody? \*\* Could it be [Siesta](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093969)? ---
**Author:** ![Mystery\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f14d63/32.png) [@Mystery\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mystery_Dog)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/72 "2002-09-26T11:54:31Z")
**Horseflesh** , that’s it! Necromancy! I had forgotten that they tried to bury her alive, but your reminding me of that confirms for me that you’re right. Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![TPWombat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbce88/32.png) [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/73 "2002-09-26T12:28:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by essvee \* > \*\*OO! OO! Maybe Brit dopers can help. Here’s what I remember. > > Movie from the 60’s, I think. Youthful actors with British accents. Motorbike gang. Their leader dies in a crash. Somehow the other kids think they can join him by crashing and dying too. One by one they do stuff like ride their motorbikes into the fronts of buses. > > Scared the everloving shiite out of me. I’ve always wanted to know what movie this was. Thanks in advance. \*\* That would be [Psychomania](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0067630). Hope you appreciate that. Took me half a friggin’ hour to dredge it up out of my memory (I knew it would bug me for the rest of the day if I didn’t get it 🙂 ) "_And the world never knew his name But the chosen few know of his fame Come join his company Riding free_ Ha! ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/74 "2002-09-26T14:15:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Could it be Siesta? Thanks **TPWombat**! I think you nailed it! ---
**Author:** ![Morgainelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Morgainelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgainelf)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/75 "2002-09-26T14:53:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Morgainelf \* > \*\ ***Cat Fight** , I remember both books you describe. The second one is definitely the one I was talking about. If you think of the title, please let me know! > > **Tars Tarkas** , that wasn’t it. That book was written in 1991 - I should have mentioned that I read it around 1978. > > **Horseflesh** , I called my mother and she remembers the book too, but couldn’t recall the title. I’m sorry about your grandma - my grandfather had Alzheimers. It sucks. > > And **haardvark** , I have _Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster_\* on my coffee table right now. 😃 \*\* I’m such a dork. The book definitely _was_ **The Dollhouse Murders** , published in 1983. I mis-read the link, then mis-remembered how old I was when I read it. I’m off to [www.booksense.com](http://www.booksense.com) to place some orders! ---
**Author:** ![Gravity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gravity/32/14322_2.png) [@Gravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gravity)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2002, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/76 "2002-09-26T19:18:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Horseflesh \* > **What I remember: I think it was most certainly by one of the Big Three cyberpunk authors (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, or Bruce Sterling), but reviews on Amazon don’t address the bits I remember. I could be wrong about the author. The book was in circulation in the early 90s.** **Horseflesh** , I’m darn sure that the book is by **Wilhelmina Baird** , [Crashcourse](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0441121632/qid=1033067143/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-4455084-5679214?v=glance), from 1993. I actually really like this book and the sequel, Clipjoint. I don’t think that it’s very well known. ---
**Author:** ![Horseflesh](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horseflesh/32/7502_2.png) [@Horseflesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horseflesh)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2002, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/77 "2002-09-27T05:32:33Z")
**Gravity** - that’s dead-on. Woo-hoo! I kept thinking the book’s name was **Snow Crash** but I have that book and of course that wasn’t it. I now see why I confused the two. Thanks a bunch! ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Gnat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2002, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/78 "2002-09-29T02:05:29Z")
The dollhouse book reminded me of one I myself read as a youth… It involved a family that moved to a new house. The daughter finds a dollhouse in the attic that corresponds to the real house. When she looks through the windows, she can see scenes from the past that happened in the real house. There’s a woman (who I associate with red for some reason), her daughter (or stepdaughter) who she locks up in the attic for being bad, and a nurse/maid/governess who live around the turn of the century. There’s also a family with two boys who lived there during WWII (they had blackout windows). In the end, we discover that the woman from the turn of the century had locked the daughter in the attic and then lost the key and left the daughter there rather than tell anybody. I believe there’s a somewhat grisly part where the girl from the present discovers the remains of the daughter. From the scenes in the dollhouse, the girl from the present deduces the location of the key and slips it through the window of the dollhouse attic to the daughter of some hundred years before. The daughter therefore escapes, and the girl from the present gradually forgets all the stuff with the dollhouse. This is not **The Dollhouse Murders**. This is not **Flowers in the Attic**. Can anyone help me?? ---
**Author:** ![BillDozer74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dfb087/32.png) [@BillDozer74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BillDozer74)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2002, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/79 "2002-09-29T14:56:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by deborak \* > \*\* > The song - talk about vague! It’s a country/western song, fairly recent (last 5 years or so). It’s by a male singer whose lover has left him (like all country songs). The only lyrics I vaguely remember are “I called her Mom in San Antone just to see how she had been”…and the part I always liked was during the chorus, there’s a short melody/rift played on an electric banjo (I think) - it’s just three or four notes, but it was a really original sound (to me, anyway). And I can’t for the life of me remember the song… \*\* This sounds like “How A Cowgirl Says Goodbye” by Tracy Lawrence. It was a pretty big country hit in 1997. ---
**Author:** ![deborak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc348/32.png) [@deborak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deborak)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2002, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690/80 "2002-09-29T17:15:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BillDozer74 \* > \*\* > > This sounds like “How A Cowgirl Says Goodbye” by Tracy Lawrence. It was a pretty big country hit in 1997. \*\* Holy cow - you are amazing! You’re exactly right, thanks!! The little melody (and I think it’s a fiddle, actually, not a banjo) has stuck in my head all these years, and now I have the rest of the song to go with it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-official-identify-from-a-vague-desciption-thread/128690.md?page=5)