Endless Love (1981)

Set in Chicago, a 17 year old boy (Martin Hewitt) and a 15 year old girl (Brooke Shields) fall in love. When her father (Don Murray) refuses to let the boy see his daughter, the teenage boy sets their house on fire. Based on the novel by Scott Spencer and directed by Franco Zeffirelli (ROMEO AND JULIET). This is one sick movie! Spencer's dark novel about obsessive love and its psychotic and unhinged teenage boy's obsession with a 15 year old girl is turned into a sappy tale of "true" love between teens and how a conventional society attempts to destroy that "true" love. In 1968, Zeffirelli's version of Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET turned it into a teen fantasy. In that movie, Zeffirelli discreetly gazed over Leonard Whiting's nude body but in the more permissive 1981, he doesn't hold back and lovingly lingers over Hewitt's nude body till Zeffirelli's own obsession takes over! Zeffirelli's romanticization of the book's dangerous love into a conventional teenage love story makes one wonder if he understood the novel. As an actor, Hewitt is a pretty boy cipher and his career went nowhere until he quit acting altogether. With Tom Cruise, Shirley Knight, Richard Kiley, Beatrice Straight and Penelope Milford.