SLAUGHTERHOUSE- FIVE 289
Perrine), a beautiful young porn star. She suspects Billy is time traveling again and
offers him a distracting kiss. Suddenly Billy is back at the Battle of the Bulge. Shortly
thereafter, two German soldiers capture the trio. It is the summer of 1946, at Cape
Cod, Mas sa chu setts. Billy and his overweight bride, Valencia Merble Pilgrim (Sha-
ron Gans), are on their honeymoon. She says she thinks he had girlfriends during
the war but is glad they waited to have sex and that he married her. Back in World
War II Billy, Weary, and Lazzaro, along with many other war captives, are march-
ing through the streets of a war- torn town. Flirted with by two young prostitutes
while marching, Billy accidentally steps on Weary’s gangrenous feet. This enrages
Lazzaro, who beats Billy for his clumsiness. Suddenly it is the late 1950s and Billy
and his family are dedicating a new optometry office in Ilium. Back in the war,
Billy enters the boxcar, goes to sleep, and finds himself at a Veterans Administra-
tion (VA) hospital in the spring of 1946 being treated for shell shock. His mother
(Lucille Benson) is talking to fellow patient, Elliot Rosewater (Henry Bumstead)
about Billy’s war experiences. Then Billy is back in the boxcar, with Weary blam-
ing him for his death. Lazzaro cradles him in his arms as he dies. Billy finds him-
self back in the VA hospital being given shock treatment. Billy’s train pulls up to a
POW camp somewhere in Germany. Billy is given a blue, fur- collared overcoat by
German soldiers as a joke. The men are pro cessed by a German officer and then
led into a shower room to be deloused. Afterwards, Billy finds himself at age eight
(Bob “Tiger” Hemond) at the YMCA, where his father throws him into the pool to
either sink or swim. In WWII Billy and other soldiers are marched to the POW
camp mess hall. The En glish officer escorting Billy tells him the coat was a joke
but to wear it with pride. Billy is at his new home in Ilium in 1947 playing with
his new puppy, Spot. There is a party going on at his house, celebrating the birth
of his daughter, Barbara. Leaving the party, Billy and his dog are by the lake when
he sees a strange beam of light coming toward him and then leaving. Next he is
back to the POW camp. Lazzaro threatens Billy for Weary’s death, but a kindly
fellow soldier, Edgar Derby (Eugene Roche), intervenes. It is Billy and Valencia’s
anniversary at their home in the summer of 1964. Billy catches his son in the bath-
room looking at a porn magazine. Later, Billy looks at the magazine himself and
ogles the centerfold of Montana Wildhack. Back at the POW camp the men are
assigned to Dresden. Billy and his family are watching a soft- core porn movie on
TV with Montana Wildhack in it. Billy and fellow soldiers are in a boxcar on their
way to Dresden. Circa 1965, Billy and his wife pull up to a cemetery with a police
officer who has caught his now- delinquent son, Robert (Perry King) vandalizing
tombstones. Billy offers to pay off the officers for the damages. It is February 1968.
Billy and fellow optometrists, including his father- in- law, are about to take a char-
tered flight to Montreal for a convention. Billy sees visions of skiers in the crowd
when waving goodbye and tells the pi lots that the plane is going to crash— which
it does. Back to Dresden, the el derly German officer tells them of their quarters,
Slaughterhouse- Five, where they will be staying and what to shout in German in
case of emergency. Injured and buried in the snow in the Green Mountains, Billy
is rescued by a group of skiers. After hearing that he is alive at a hospital in Ver-
mont, Billy’s wife attempts to rush to his side but in her haste, drives crazily,