Main Cast: Raquel Welch, Michael Gross, Bonnie Bartlett, Peter Michael Goetz, Joanna Miles
Release Year: 1987
Country: US
Run Time: 100 minutes
Plot
Raquel Welch's astonishing performance in the made-for-TV Right to Die compensates for any number of script deficiencies. Ms. Welch plays a successful psychologist with a happy home life who is suddenly stricken with the dreaded neurological affliction ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease"). At first, she is determined to fight for her life, but as her conditions deteriorates and she becomes more of a human vegetable, Ms. Welch begs her husband (Michael Gross) to help her die. The producers of Right to Die chose Raquel Welch not so much for her resemblance to the real-life person upon whom the story is based, but in the hopes that this "offbeat" piece of casting would attract a large TV audience. Ms. Welch accepted the role to counter industry accusations that she was impossible to work with. Thus the motivations behind Right to Die were more commercially oriented than the film's subject matter deserved, but this can be excused in the light of Welch's harrowingly accurate portrayal of a woman literally dying by inches before our eyes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Ed O'Neill; Jaclyn Bernstein; Gerald Castillo; Lilyan Chauvin; Lynn Clark; Nancy Fish; Alan Fudge; Castulo Guerra; Lily Mariye; Diane Salinger; David Wohl; Karen Landry; Mark Shera; Philip Linton; Ashley Bank; Nay K. Dorsey; Edmund Stoiber
Credit
Judith Weiner - Casting, Robert M. Moore - Costume Designer, Paul Wendkos - Director, James Galloway - Editor, Don Ohlmeyer - Executive Producer, Brad Fiedel - Composer (Music Score), Dena Roth - Production Designer, Bernd Heinl - Cinematographer, Phil Penningroth - Screenwriter
Right to Die, directed by Paul Wendkos, was a 1987 made-for-TV film that explored issues relating to the Right to Die movement. Raquel Welch was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1988 for her performance as Emily Bauer, a psychologist diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease who comes to desire her own death as her disease progresses. Michael Gross co-starred as her husband, Bob.
