Crazy Love

A fascinating documentary about the relationship between a stalker and the object of his obsession. In interviews with the two of them, their close friends, colleagues and others from their past, the film portrays the 'love story' of Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, which was extensively publicised in American newspapers in the 1950s. Photographs, film footage, newspaper articles and music set the scene for the story, in which Pugach, a successful lawyer and film producer, fell in love with the gorgeous Riss. The interviewees recount the events chronologically, and the tension builds up to a dramatic climax, when a rejected Pugach told Riss, "I can't have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you." Riss was engaged to someone else at the time, so Pugach hired three thugs to throw lye in her face. The media devoured the sensational story, and despite his initial denials, Pugach was tried and went to prison for 14 years. But even from his cell, he continued to correspond with the woman whose life he had destroyed. And then the unbelievable happened: 16 years after leaving her permanently scarred, Burt Pugach married his beloved Linda. The film gives insight into what at first glance seem incomprehensible motives for the actions of both the perpetrator and his victim.