The place: a small resort town on the Jersey shore. The time: off-season. The hottest spot in town is the Pavilion, a bar that’s seen better days. Pete, the owner, is desperate to drum up some business. Though his only employees are his daughter Myra, bartender Rags, and part-time janitor Ralph, the bar can’t turn a profit when the summer people aren’t in town. He hires a stripper, Danny Lee, and when she falls in love with the handsome but slow-witted Ralph, the trouble really starts. The trouble being Ralph’s wife, Luanne. The woman is twenty years his senior, bedridden (though the doctor says there’s nothing wrong with her), and possessed of the nastiest tongue on the eastern seaboard. She holds the entire town in her thrall as her relentless and all-too accurate gossip causes misery, ruins lives, and has even driven people to suicide. Her curious relationship with Ralph is disrupted by his affair with Danny Lee — she doesn’t mind if he sleeps with other women, but the thought that he might be in love with one of them drives her mad with jealousy. She lashes out by doing what she does best — spreading gossip. She spreads the word that Bobbie, the son of her doctor, is dealing drugs out of the Pavilion; that Myra — Bobbie’s girl — is a junkie; that Rags killed his family in a car accident; and that Pete once raped his own daughter. Everyone in town has good reason to kill the woman, but when somebody does, it marks only the beginning of a series of violent acts. —TVguide.com
