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Post by kooshmeister on Aug 16, 2022 19:14:07 GMT
 The Tanner family has just moved to the picture perfect town of Silverdale. Father Blake, an employee of the mega-corporation TarrenTech, just got transferred there. His family is less than thrilled. Wife Sharon finds the place kind of insipid and a little too good to be true. Kids Mark and Kelly miss their friends. But nevertheless, they've moved. Blake is insecure about his son being short and thin, and so, much to Sharon's eternal annoyance, he constantly pesters Mark about trying out for the football team. Mark, who prefers his hobbies of photography and tending to his pet rabbits, isn't sure he'd even make the cut, considering that Siverdale High's team are the biggest and best around. In fact, they're downright monstrous. They're bigger, faster and stronger than any other team. And meaner, too. Something the adults are happy to file under "boys will be boys" as long as the team keeps winning. Then one day, during a game, star player Jeff LaConnor tackles another player so bad he practically breaks the other boy's spine. Coach Phil Collins doesn't seem terribly concerned, confident the boy's family won't sue. Jeff's father Chuck is equally uninterested, insisting it was an accident. But Charlotte LaConnor is convinced that her son has changed somehow. Ever since he went to that sports clinic run by Dr. Marty Ames. All the football players on Silverdale's team do. Maybe there's a reason they're so much bigger and stronger. And more violent. At the hospital, Rick Ramirez, the injured player, is in a coma. The opposing team's coach, Bob Jenkins, who had hoped to marry Rick's mother, is enraged and threatens to sue. He wants Rick's mother to sue as well. ER Doctor Andrew "Mac" MacCallum is sympathetic (he doesn't like what TarrenTech and the "rah-rah-rah" win-at-all-costs football culture has done to the town), but advises against it. Despite his personal feelings about how football culture has taken over Silverdale, he knows that taking on Coach Collins is a no-win situation. In the meantime, TarrenTech offers to pay for all of Rick's medical bills. Entirely out of the goodness of their hearts, claims local company man Jerry Harris. Mac wonders why the corporation would be footing the bill. They do fund the sports clinic where all the Silverdale players go, but... In the meantime, Mark has fallen hard for a girl at school named Linda Harris (none other than Jerry's daughter). Eager to impress her, he finally makes his father proud by deciding to try out for football. This doesn't go unnoticed by Jeff LaConnor, who also has his eye on Linda and in fact considers her his girlfriend. He and his cronies decide they need to teach the little dweeb a lesson. Naturally, the beatdown goes too far. Jeff pretty much begins acting like such a wild beast that even his fellow football thugs are too scared to help him beat up on Mark anymore, and the police are involved. Jeff flees. After a lengthy pursuit, the cops nab him, but don't take him to jail. Instead, they take him to see Dr. Ames, who runs the sports clinic... Not long afterwards, Chuck LaConnor has to break the bad news to his wife that their son has been deemed hopelessly insane and is being committed to a mental institution. He won't say where. And she isn't allowed to go see him, either. And furthermore, they're moving. Immediately. In the meantime, at the insistence of his father, Mark goes to Dr. Ames' clinic (Jerry Harris just raves about the place). He doesn't remember a thing about what happens there, but after he gets out, he feels... different. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Blake is thrilled. But Sharon, like Charlotte LaConnor, is concerned. She notices her son neglecting his hobbies and his pets, and becoming increasingly more aggressive and short-tempered. Like a typical angry, stupid jock and not the sweet kid she raised. What exactly are they doing to the boys at that clinic...? |
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Post by kooshmeister on Nov 23, 2023 6:17:01 GMT
An interesting alternate cover:  |
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