Monthly Archives: October 2018

Nekromantik (1987)

Posted on October 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: They like dead bodies.

Rob and Betty (Robert Schmadtke, Beatrice Manowski) are a couple into necrophilia. Rob’s job as a street sweeper allows him to steal human body parts, which he brings home and stores in jars. One day he is able to sneak home a decomposed body and his wife makes love to it, which makes him jealous. Then he loses his job causing his wife to leave him and forcing him into an even darker mental spiral.

Director Jorg Buttgereit has stated that he never intended to be a serious filmmaker and made this simply as a means to rebel at the German film rating system, which would routinely edit out violent scenes from their films and ‘to shock as many people as possible.’ In that category it does succeed, but what I got most out of it was how funny it is with the ‘romantic’ sequence where a couple throws a severed head back and forth between each other in  a sort of playful, loving way while soft, romantic music plays in the background being the funniest.

There’s also an interesting film-within-a-film concept here where it makes pointed observations on the effects of horror movies on the general public while using its characters to inadvertently convey that message. The best scene here involves Robert going to a horror movie inside a theater, which shows  a woman onscreen getting ambushed by her attacker and then cut up by his knife, but the camera then cuts back to the movie audience and observes their detached and ambivalent  expressions even as the screams of the woman continue on the screen, which to me was the film’s most frightening and revealing moment.

The gore factor is of course quite high uses the technique first done in Cannibal Holocaust  where it cuts back and forth between an actual animal killing to that of a human getting cut open until you can no longer differentiate the real from the fake. The special effects are quite authentic looking despite the minuscule budget and even features a cat death although thankfully I think that one was improvised.

The acting by Manowski is excellent as she shows no hesitation or restraint with her role in a demanding part most other actresses would’ve refused. Her onscreen presence adds erotic energy and it’s too bad she didn’t remain in it for the whole duration as it’s only when the two leads interact that it gets  the most interesting. In fact a backstory showing how they first met and what started them off into their sick habit would’ve been nice.

If you’re into trashy gore this flick is for you although it’s more sickening than scary and in fact I don’t consider it a horror movie at all, but more a dark comedy, a very dark one. This was followed 4 years later by a sequel, which continues the story right where this one leaves off,  has the same director and star, and I’m told is even more graphic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 19, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 15Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Jorg Buttgereit

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat

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The Brood (1979)

Posted on October 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wife creates dwarf murderers.

After suffering a mental breakdown Nola (Samantha Eggar) is sent away to a secluded clinic run by Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed) who uses unorthodox methods to heal his patients. Once she gets sent there strange murderers resembling dwarfs begin to terrorize her family members including her daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds) who they kidnap. Her husband Frank (Art Hindle) is convinced there’s some connection between these strange killers and the institute so he goes there to confront the Dr., but is ill prepared to the secret that awaits him.

Through the years this film has become a staple to director David Cronenberg’s work and is well filmed with shadowy lighting and fluid camerawork that help create an ongoing creepy feel as well as Howard Shore’s pounding score. The film’s ultimate moment though remains Eggar’s bizarre ‘birthing’ scene where she takes a blood drenched embryo and licks it, which apparently was something she improvised on-the-spot. It remains perversely disturbing even by today’s standards, but was cut from the release at the time and only now is intact with the Criterion Blu-ray in all its glory or gruesomeness depending on your point-of-view.

The story though isn’t as clever as the filmmakers think as I was able to figure it out almost immediately and having to watch a protagonist take 90-minutes to come to the same conclusion that took me only 10-minutes makes for a rather annoying and dull plotline. There’s also no explanation for why Nola is able to have the ability that she does. If it’s connect it to the experimental therapy she’s going through then fine, but others in that group should , or at least some of them, be able to do the same thing, but they’re not, so why is that?

There’s also a murder scene that comes in the middle of the movie that to me didn’t seem logical. It entails the dwarf murderers coming into the kindergarten class that Candice is attending and using toy hammers that they pick-up from a nearby table to bludgeon her teacher to death. Normally toy hammers are lightweight,  so no matter how hard or how long a person may swing it at their victim it’s highly unlikely that it would be able to crush their skull. I also thought all of the children who witnessed the crime would’ve run out of the room screaming instead of just one and having them then stand around the body quietly whimpering afterwards sounded forced and fake.

Reed’s dark and commanding presence always helps every movie that he is in although it’s a bit weird that he becomes the ultimate hero especially after the opening scene in which he is emotionally abusive. Eggar, whose eyes look strangely wider and more rounder here, has her acting meddle put to the test by portraying a person that I didn’t think she had the ability to do, but she proves quite qualified.

The young Hinds is surprisingly effective despite her extremely young age, but Hindle is transparent as the protagonist. I realize that he acts as a sort of buffer to the craziness, but he lacks an edge and unable to match the energy of his flamboyant co-stars.

Horror fans should find this thing adequate, but for me the story is too basic and predictable they’re needed to be some sort of secondary angle or side-story. Supposedly Cronenberg was inspired to write this after dealing with the custody battle he had with his own ex-wife, Margaret Hindson, who had worked with him on many of his earlier projects. According to him Eggar’s character reflected many of her same traits.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 25, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: David Cronenberg

Studio: Canadian Film Development Corporation

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Criterion Collection), Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies from Canada, Slasher/Gore

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The Driller Killer (1979)

Posted on October 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Electric drill relieves stress.

Reno (Abel Ferrara) is a New York apartment dweller who frets over his inability to pay his bills and the constant noise coming from a punk band next door who perform at all hours of the day and night and to which his landlord (Alan Wynroth) refuses to do anything about. The pressures to finish his latest painting, which he hopes to sell, become too much, so to alleviate the tension he takes a power drill out onto the streets and kills random homeless people with it late at night. For awhile this is enough but he eventually decides to use it on other people in his life who he feels have wronged him, which includes not only his girlfriend,but an art gallery owner (Harry Schultz) who refused to purchase his painting.

This is a definite step above the usual horror fare and seems in many ways like an arthouse film. It’s ability to capture New York’s dark urban underbelly gives the viewer a strong taste of what the main character is going through until you almost feel like you’re trapped there alongside him. The talky segments that come in-between the killings, which are usually the boring parts in most other horror films, are surprisingly captivating as they vividly convey all the reasons why Reno is so angry and give the viewer much the same feeling.

When the killings finally do start to happen it’s not so much the graphic violence that’s disturbing, but the fact that we relate to the man who’s doing it. We’ve understood his pent up rage by seeing how the unrelenting, impersonal urban system continually works against him making the murders act like a stress reliever not only to the killer, but the viewer as well as it breaks both us and him away from the never ending challenges of everyday life, which the film essentially portrays as being the real horror. Instead of being repelled by the bad guy we connect to him sending this movie into a far darker psychological realm than most.

While Ferrara shows a gifted ability as a director the film almost defeats it’s unique edge by dwelling too much on the urban hell hole theme as it makes its point and then drags it out by hitting-it-home again and again. The footage of the punk band becomes excessive too until it almost becomes more like a musical docu-drama. The killings aren’t very imaginative either as one quickly becomes like the other eventually making them seem like throwaway scenes that quickly lose their impact.

The film’s ending is particularly disappointing as it fades out before we know what happens to either the main character or his girlfriend (Carol Slaughter). A good horror film needs a strong finish and this one cops-out like it didn’t know how to end it, so it just leaves it up to the viewer to guess. While I commend its effort to take the genre into a more complex and unusual area I still felt it could’ve gone even further with its warped premise than it does.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 15, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Abel Ferrara

Studio: Navaron Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Psychological, Slasher/Gore

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Angst (1983)

Posted on October 29, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Madman attacks peaceful family.

A serial killer (Erwin Leder) gets released from prison despite still having the urge to kill. He initially tries to strangle a female cab driver (Renate Kastelik), but she throws him out of her car before he can do it. He then goes running through the woods until he comes upon an isolated home. He breaks into it and kills each of the three family members living there one-by-one before eventually taking their lifeless bodies with him in the trunk of his car while he drives aimlessly around Austria.

This film is based on the real-life Austrian case of Werner Kniesek who murdered a family of three in their home on January 16, 1980 shortly after being released from prison. In that case Werner had known one of the victims previously while the movie its portrayed as if the killer has no connection to the occupants at all. In the actual crime Werner also killed the family’s cat where in the movie the pet is a dog, which the killer not only allows to live, but eventually befriends.

I’ve spent years complaining how most horror films aren’t very realistic, so I suppose I really can’t complain when one finally does decide to go all-in with graphic realism and not spare anything. The film certainly succeeds in being like a grisly true-life crime, but in the process it’s not very scary either. You know right from the start where it’s going, which makes the eventual violence come off as agonizingly drawn out and pointless. It’s like footage caught on a closed-circuit camera where you have no emotional bond with the people or action and when it’s over you’re left feeling drained and ambivalent.

Many people have praised the innovative camera work, which is provocative and some have even compared this to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but that film was more compelling in the way the main character was able to entice regular people to help him with his crimes while here there is virtually no dialogue or character arcs. There’s basically no story either just a graphic dramatization of a random crime that gets excessively drawn-out.

Leder is excellent and I liked how he portrays his character as being nervous, anxious and perpetually frightened as opposed to the stereotypical way of showing psychos who are robotically cold and relentlessly evil.  His voice-over narration allows for moments of insight too particularly when, as he is killing his victims, his thoughts are instead focused on past wrongs that were inflicted onto him from years ago by others, which made me believe this could very well be the thought pattern of most killers who selfishly remain fixated on their own personal injustices even as they callously destroy others.

The acting by the supporting cast is impressive too not so much from what they emote since they’re given very little to say or do, but more with the way they sacrificed  their bodies for the project particularly when the killer drags their lifeless corpses over broken glass (no mannequins or dummies were used) and down several flights of stairs. I also loved the dog and in fact he’s the highlight that allows for moments of levity and even comic relief in an otherwise unrelentingly grim film that will appeal only to a select group of people.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: May 2, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes, 1Hour 15Minutes (Director’s Cut)

Not Rated

Director: Gerald Kargl

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with Nudity, Psychological, Slasher/Gore

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It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)

Posted on October 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer babies shipped away.

Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty) is the father to one of the mutant babies who agrees to have his child shipped away under a court order to a deserted island where it can live freely among the other mutant babies while no longer being a threat to the rest of society. 5 years later Stephen is then asked to join in on an expedition by a group of doctors who want to go to the island to monitor the growth of the children, but when they arrive the children overpower them and force Stephen to return to the mainland in order to meet-up with Stephen’s wife Ellen (Karen Black) who gave birth to one of them years earlier.

Larry Cohen has stated that he wanted to take the theme to its logical conclusion and see what the babies would become like when they grew older, but it was the killer baby plot-line that is what made it so unique and by his point it no longer represents what it initially did. Now they look like overweight versions of the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the setting like a whacked-out revision of The Island of Dr. Moreau and instead of being a horror film it’s more like a sci-fi flick and not a particularly good one at that.

It’s only mildly interesting when it’s on island anyways, but surprisingly the story doesn’t remain there and the  ill-advised humor that gets thrown in does nothing but make this already silly idea seem even sillier. We do however get to see more of the babies than in the first two installments, but this doesn’t help because they end up resembling second-rate clay animation figures, which looks tacky as hell.

Moriarty elevates it with a much needed edge and the fact that he’s staunchly pro-life in real-life gives the part an added layer of genuineness.  The only problem is that the character has the same arch as the father’s in the first two films had, which makes it redundant.

Black isn’t in it much, but manages to come on strong at the finish. I was perplexed however as to why in all three films it was the father who went on a crusading mission to save the babies and never the mother. Why couldn’t the wives/mothers have worked with their husbands as a team on this endeavor and the fact that they don’t seems sexist.

Per Leonard Maltin’s review there’s some ‘serious comments’ here on many modern-day social issues, but when it’s as cheaply made as this you really don’t care. There’s also too many tangents including a poorly staged street gang fight that is unconvincing. The first film was a novelty with a few redeeming qualities, but the  sequels do nothing but drive that original idea into the ground and turn the entire concept into a laughable, forgettable grade-Z farce.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 15, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Offbeat, Sequels

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It Lives Again (1978)

Posted on October 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three more monster babies.

As Jody and Eugene (Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest) hold a baby shower in excited anticipation for their newborn they meet Frank (John Ryan) the father whose wife gave birth to the monster baby in the first film. He warns them that their baby may be the same way and advises them to give birth to it in the back of a semi-truck specially equipped to handle the mutant child. The couple initially resist, but then come into contact with Malory (John Marley) and a police force intent on killing it. Frank manages to get their baby to a secret underground home where two other mutant children are being held under the observation of Dr. Perry (Andrew Duggan) who wants to raise the monster babies and have them multiply in order to create a whole new race of people.

This sequel to the surprise cult hit starts out with potential despite neglecting to explain why these mutant births are occurring. In the first one it was intimated that contraceptive pills were the cause, but here that gets forgotten and never even mentioned. Keeping the babies in an underground facility bogs the action down and eventually turns this into a talky drag and the idea of having three killer babies isn’t all that impressive either as I would’ve imagine that by now, given that four years have passed from when the first story took place, there should’ve been hundreds if not thousands of them.

The film’s biggest drawback though is that we don’t see much of the babies and instead get treated to extended shots of the adults talking while only hearing the baby’s crying in the background, which is boring. If the budget didn’t allow for elaborate special effects, which forced them to keep the footage of the little monsters to a minimum, then this cheesy excuse for a horror film should never have been made at all because what’s the point of watching it otherwise?

Lloyd and Forrest are good, but their characters shift perspectives too quickly. In the first film Frank’s changing opinion of his newborn came about slowly and realistically, but here the parents see-saw from loving the baby one second to wanting to kill it the next. The jump cuts are also an issue, which makes the intended scares  hard to follow and the film’s message is a muddled mess too. The first one had a seemingly a pro-life point-of-view while here those who want to save the babies are portrayed as being fringy lunatics.

Alternate Title: It’s Alive II

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 10, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Sequels

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It’s Alive (1974)

Posted on October 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Newborn is a monster.

Frank (John Ryan) and Lenore (Sharon Farrell) are excited about the birth of their second child, but during the delivery they find to their horror that the newborn is a freakish monster who kills all the doctors in the delivery room and then escapes out onto the streets. The police try to track it down while Frank initially avows to kill it himself, but when his paternal instincts eventually set in he has second thoughts.

This is for the most part a fascinating, offbeat look at the abortion issue that seems to be a continuing theme with writer/director Larry Cohen who also co-scripted Daddy’s Gone-a-Hunting. In many ways it’s less of a horror film and more of a character study as the main focus is on Frank and the way his feelings on the baby change during the course of the story. In fact it’s Ryan’s intense performance that’s the film’s mainstay and what really propels it.

The baby itself offers intrigue and I liked how his appearance is kept mostly a mystery throughout, which helps build even more fear, but then we never end up getting to see it up close, which is a big letdown. Instead it’s just fleeting long distance shots and even then that doesn’t happen until the very end. The only reason to see a movie like this is to get a genuine look at the thing and when that only gets teased it’s a rip-off.

The baby’s super intelligence had me confused too. Supposedly it’s deformed due to the mother taking some contraceptive pills, but how does this make the child super smart to the point that he is able to find the school that Frank and Lenore’s child goes to, in crowded L.A. of all places and then eventually Frank and Lenore’s house? This thing is just a few days old, so how is it able to read street signs and find places and be ‘pre-programmed’ as it were to know which school/house to go to?

I was also confused at how the baby was able to attack people by biting into their necks. If it’s a crawling baby shouldn’t the feet and ankles of the victim be the place that suffers injury? And how was the baby able to kill all the doctors and nurses in the delivery room? If he was attacking one of them couldn’t the others have ganged up on the little guy and overpowered him or even just ran out of the room and yelled for help or did they all just stupidly stand there as if frozen while the baby jumped onto each Dr. and bit into them one-by-one?

Never getting a clear consistent view of the baby, nor properly explaining what the ‘logic rules’ were was a big turn-off for me when I first saw this decades ago and I came away considering it a Grade-B schlockfeast with little redeeming value. Upon second viewing I’ve softened on it a bit and appreciated Cohen’s efforts especially on such a limited budget, but the screwy loopholes and flimsy effects ultimately hurts it either way.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 26, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Larry Cohen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Offbeat

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Possession (1981)

Posted on October 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: His wife goes crazy.

Mark (Sam Neill) is shocked to learn that his happy marriage isn’t so happy when his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) asks for a divorce. He hires a detective (Carl Duering) where he learns that she is living in an apartment, but she is not alone as something else resides there with her and it’s not human.

This was sadly the only English language film directed by Ukrainian born Andrzej Zulawksi who did most of his movies in Poland. This one was made in Germany in 1980 and what struck me almost immediately is that it seems like it could’ve been done just yesterday as it institutes much of the hand-held camerawork that is so prevalent in films today, but still quite rare back then. Sometimes I find this technique annoying and overdone, but here it helps build the plot’s kinetic energy and accentuates the material’s off-kilter tone.

The gifted Adjani is the main attraction particularly the drawn out scene where she becomes possessed while inside an underground subway, which has to be seen to be believed and quite frankly a landmark moment in cinema.  I also loved how the director focuses in on her expressive blue eyes where in one scene they convey a fiery evil and then quickly cuts to them exposing a pleading emotion that remains just as captivating.

Sam Neill makes the viewer feel almost exhausted as he manifests the feelings of his character to the point that he looks both physically and emotionally drained and his acting becomes indistinguishable from genuine raw emotions. I have seen him many films before, but here he’s like a different person and not connected to the man we’ve seen or known before.

There’s definitely some over-the-top moments, but what I really liked is how it never forgets about the little details either. I’ve complained before about how blood in most movies looks fake, but here it has just the right reddish hue, which looks more authentic as does the scene where Neill slaps Adjani violently. I also appreciated how the child character (Michael Hogben) is never forgotten. Too many other films dealing with a fighting couple introduce the child up front, but then he essentially disappears as it becomes all about the adults, but parenthood is a 24-hour job that parents can’t just forget about even when it’s inconvenient and this film nicely reminds both the viewer and characters of that.

The more the film went on the more convinced I became of how it could never have been made in the US as there’s too much of an emphasis on making movies ‘marketable’ and genre specific while this film defies all the preconceived formulas, which is why it’s so cool as you have absolutely no idea where it’s going and each new twist is a genuine surprise. Despite being almost 40 years old it remains fresh and inventive and far more original than 99 % of the other movies out there. It’s like a drug trip where after it’s over you feel like you’ve lived through an actual event.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 25, 1981

Runtime: 2Hours 7Minutes

Rated R

Director: Andrzej Zulawski

Studio: Gaumont

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Region B/2)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Psychological, Surreal/Fantasy

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The Haunting of Julia (1977)

Posted on October 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ghost child haunts home.

Julia (Mia Farrow) leaves her husband Magnus (Keir Dullea) after their child accidently chokes on some food and dies. She then moves into a large home, which also had a child die in it years before. After Julia begins living there for a while she notices the presence of a ghostly spirit and holds a séance run by Mrs. Flood (Anna Wing) where she learns that a child was murdered by a group of other children lead by the mischievous Olivia, who is now the one haunting her home.

The film is based on an early Peter Straub noveI, but seems all mixed up in what direction it wants to take and I couldn’t understand why the first part of the story dealing with her child dying was even needed as the second half goes into an entirely different direction.  It also introduces a solid nemesis in the form of her controlling ex-husband who dies off quickly, which again left me wondering why his character was even put into the story at all.

The choking aspect is another issue and I was genuinely shocked they showed it as it’s hard to effectively pull off without it looking unintentionally comical. Having the child get hit by a train, car, slipping off the side of a cliff, or even drowning is far more dramatic and could leave a lasting visual impact whereas this looks as clumsily staged as it sounds.

The séance should’ve been avoided too since that has been parodied so much in movies that it’s hard to take seriously. The film doesn’t approach it with any new interesting angle so it comes-off as tacky as every other séance you’ve seen in a movie, even the funny ones, and yet this one we’re supposed to take seriously even though any sane participant would be convinced that the woman leading it was simply overacting for affect, which is how it looks.

The backstory involving the female child who was able to somehow control the other boys in the neighborhood to do her bidding had an intriguing element, which made me think that’s what should’ve been played out while the ghost angle dropped completely. Instead it could’ve analyzed the psycho young girl while she was alive and examined how she got the way that she did and what methods she used to convince the other kids to do what she wanted, which is never explored, but would’ve been far scarier than what ultimately gets played out.

Farrow with her super short haircut looks too much like she did in Rosemary’s Baby and a different do was needed to avoid the resemblance. Dullea has potential as the heavy, but then disappears too soon. The only one that does shine is veteran actress Cathleen Nesbit who hams it up as the mother of the killer girl, but overall the rest of it is a big letdown including the non-eventful ending that completely fizzles making it no surprise why the studio left this one sitting on the shelf for 5 years before finally giving a limited release that netted it very little in return.

Alternate Title: Full Circle

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: May 29, 1981 (Filmed in 1976)

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Loncraine

Studio: Discovery Films

Available: DVD (Out-of-Print), Amazon video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies Based on Novels

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Dominique (1979)

Posted on October 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dead wife haunts husband.

Dominque (Jean Simmons) is a woman suffering from a fragile mental state who is convinced that her husband David (Cliff Robertson) is trying to drive her insane. She eventually hangs herself and then her ghostly presence comes back to haunt him, which ends up driving him over the edge Dominique (Jean Simmons) is a woman with a fragile mental state who is convinced that her husband as well.

The film was directed by the talented Michael Anderson, but you’d hardly know it as the DVD transfer by Synergy, which is already known to produce some very low grade quality stuff and looks like somebody’s badly lighted, grainy home movie. Unfortunately this is the same transfer that gets streamed onto Amazon, so if you want to see this otherwise rare movie you’ll have to buckle-up and accept the substandard look.

As for the story, which is based on the novel ‘What Beckoning Ghost’ by Harold Lawlor, it’s not all that much better as the plot and characters come off as stiff and one-dimensional. There’s no backstory either, which I felt was needed to help explain why Robertson is an American living in England and what specific job does he do that allows him to be able to afford such a big mansion? There’s also passing mention of Dominique being in an earlier accident that might’ve helped explain her mental state, but it’s never talked about in detail, or better yet shown in flashback.

Initially it’s a mystery as to whether Robertson is trying to drive Simmons mad or if it is all just in her head. Finally towards the end he admits to it and supposedly it’s all just so he can get his hands onto her money, but wouldn’t it have been much easier to hire someone to kill her and make it look like an accident then trying to drive someone insane, which has no guarantee of working and could take years and years to accomplish? Also, if Dominique is already aware of what he is trying to do then why doesn’t she just leave him instead of turning to suicide?

The ghostly special effects consist of shots showing a piano playing by itself as well as a shadowy figure walking from a distance, which isn’t much and gets repeated at several different points, which becomes quite redundant. Both stars are wasted as well. Simmons is good, but she’s only in it at the start while Robertson much spends the entire second-half saying very little and instead relying on his almost constant shocked/scared expressions to help propel the plot along.

Despite all this it still manages to be moderately compelling and may appease those who are in to ghostly tales. The twist at the end is a definite surprise, but it also leaves open a lot of logic loopholes that makes the entire thing seem quite implausible.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 5, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Michael Anderson

Studio: Astral Films

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery

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