MonsterGirl’s 150 Days of Classic Horror # 115 Play Misty for Me 1971/ That Cold Day in the Park 1969 & Reflection of Fear 1973

SPOILER ALERT!

There’s a unique power in stories driven by women, especially when they’re centered on characters navigating the shadows of psychic disturbance. This trilogy stands out not just for placing women at the heart of each narrative, but for exploring the intricate, often unsettling ways their inner turmoil shapes the world around them. Each film invites us into the minds of women whose struggles with reality, desire, and identity become the engine of suspense, offering a raw, complex portrait that challenges stereotypes and makes their journeys compelling, deeply human, harrowingly intense, and utterly chilling!

PLAY MISTY FOR ME 1971

Misty Grooves and Razor-Edged Obsession: The Wild Pulse of Play Misty for Me (1971)

Dave Garver: “You haven’t got the faintest idea of what love is, we don’t even know each other.”

Evelyn Draper: “I know you. I know you. I’ve known you ever since the first time you played ‘Misty’ for me. I knew you’d come back. I just knew it.”

Play Misty for Me isn’t just Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut—it’s a time capsule of early ’70s cool, a film that pulses with the era’s groovy energy while laying the groundwork for the psycho-stalker subgenre that would haunt thrillers for decades. The story was crafted by Jo Heims, whose screenwriting career includes such notable works as You’ll Like My Mother (1972) and Nightmare in Badham County (1976), as well as an uncredited contribution to Dirty Harry (1971).

Set against the sun-drenched, jazz-soaked backdrop of Carmel-by-the-Sea, the film follows Dave Garver (Eastwood), a smooth-talking womanizer and late-night DJ whose velvet voice and easy charm make him a local celebrity and the unwitting target of Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter), a woman whose obsession with him spirals from flirtation to full-blown menace and downright bloody threat.

From the opening moments, Eastwood’s direction is both assured and stylish, capturing the mellow vibe of the California coast while never letting us forget the tension simmering beneath the surface. Cinematographer Frank Stanley bathes the film in the golden light of Monterey Bay, giving even the most sinister moments a lush, seductive quality. The camera lingers on the details that define the era: the bold fashion, the cars like Dave’s sleek Jaguar XK150, the record collections, and the laid-back jazz that floats through Dave’s studio, setting a mood that’s both inviting and sensual as hell and faintly dangerous.

The film’s psychology is as sharp as its style. What begins as a casual encounter—Dave meeting Evelyn at a local bar, drawn in by her request for him to play “Misty”– quickly turns into a study in obsession.

While Johnny Mathis’s 1959 vocal version is the most famous and is often associated with the song, the film itself uses Erroll Garner’s original instrumental recording during key scenes and the closing credits. After seeing him perform live, Clint Eastwood specifically obtained the rights to Garner’s version.

In the 1960s, there were some films that edged toward the idea of a disturbed or violent woman, such as Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket (1964) and Jean Arless in William Castle’s Homicidal 1961. There’s also Shelley Winters in What’s the Matter With Helen? in 1971; these are off the top of my head. Or the “Scream Queen” era, where women were often imperiled but rarely the source of terror themselves. However, these antiheroines were generally not stalkers in the modern sense, nor were they depicted with the psychological complexity (except for Winters) and agency that Play Misty for Me brought to Evelyn Draper.

Jessica Walter’s performance is a vivid illustration of volatility, shifting from vulnerable to predatory in a heartbeat. Without any other actress antagonist coming to mind at the moment, Evelyn is the prototype for the “psycho woman stalker” archetype. Walter infuses her with a humanity that makes her both terrifying and strangely sympathetic. Eastwood, meanwhile, plays Dave with a mix of swagger and growing unease, his laid-back confidence slowly eroded by the realization that he’s lost control of the situation. Marking Evelyn’s complete descent into homicidal mania and shattering any remaining sense of safety in Dave’s world.

The film’s sequence of events unfolds with relentless logic. After their initial night together, Evelyn’s presence becomes inescapable: She shows up unannounced at Dave’s home, his workplace, and even his favorite haunts. Her gifts and phone calls grow more intrusive, and her jealousy becomes more intense, especially when Dave reconnects with his ex-girlfriend, Tobie (Donna Mills).

Each encounter ratchets up the tension, culminating in scenes of shocking violence: Evelyn’s outbursts, the unforgettable moment she trashes Dave’s home, in one of the film’s most shocking moments. The housekeeper, Birdie, played by actress Clarice Taylor, arrives at Dave’s house, unaware of the danger lurking inside. Evelyn, already in a state of violent obsession, ambushes Birdie in the kitchen. The attack is sudden and brutal as Evelyn grabs a butcher knife and stabs her repeatedly. The violence is jarring, especially against the backdrop of the otherwise laid-back coastal setting.

John Larch’s Sgt. McCallum shares a dynamic with Clint Eastwood’s Dave Garver that’s both grounded and quietly compelling as the skeptical protector and pragmatic confidant. Their relationship is marked by a mix of professional distance and genuine concern. McCallum comes across as the steady, no-nonsense cop—he listens to Dave’s increasingly desperate stories about Evelyn’s escalating threats, and while he keeps things professional, there’s a real sense that he’s looking out for Dave. Their exchanges reveal a subtle tension; their conversations have this push-and-pull: Dave’s on edge, while McCallum has a measured, procedural calm and practical approach that never lets the drama rattle him. Still, you can tell there’s mutual respect—McCallum doesn’t brush off Dave’s fears, and when things get serious, he’s right there, willing to step in and risk his own life.

In Play Misty for Me, the name Annabel carries significant psychological and literary weight, directly referencing Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee.” In the film, Evelyn uses the name “Annabel” as an alias when she moves in with Tobie, Dave’s girlfriend, in the story’s final act. This is more than just a pseudonym—it’s a deliberate allusion to Poe’s poem, which is quoted in the film. Using the poem as a chilling signal of her ongoing obsession and her refusal to let go, after she’s been released from psychiatric care, she calls Dave at the radio station, claiming she’s moving to Hawaii for a fresh start. During this call, she recites lines from “Annabel Lee,” invoking the poem’s themes of undying, doomed love to reinforce her fixation and hint at her continued presence in his life. Poe’s “Annabel Lee” is a haunting meditation on obsessive, undying love and the pain of loss. The poem’s narrator mourns a beautiful woman whose love was so intense that even the angels envied it, leading to her death.

The harrowing climax of Play Misty for Me unfolds in a storm of violence and psychological terror at Tobie Williams’ (Donna Mills) coastal home. Evelyn, having assumed the identity of “Annabel” to pose as Tobie’s new roommate, has already murdered police Sgt. McCallum (John Larch) by stabbing him in the heart with a pair of scissors as he checks on Tobie. Inside the house, Evelyn has bound and gagged Tobie and menaces her with a long, with the gleaming pair of scissors. Evelyn, in a jealous rage, slashes a portrait of Dave with those scissors, threatening to cut her hair and taunting her with deranged, possessive fury. “God, you’re dumb!”

Evelyn Draper: “I hope Dave likes what he sees when he gets here. Because that’s what he’s taking to Hell with him!”

When Dave finally arrives, he discovers the aftermath of Evelyn’s rampage: McCallum’s body, Tobie tied up and terrified, and Evelyn lurking in the shadows. In a desperate struggle, Evelyn attacks Dave with a knife, slashing him repeatedly. Bloodied but fighting for his life and Tobie’s, Dave manages to fend her off. As the confrontation reaches its peak, Dave punches Evelyn and delivers a blow that sends her crashing through a large window and over the balcony, her body tumbling down the jagged cliffs to the rocks and ocean below.

The film closes with Dave and Tobie staggering out of the house, the trauma of the night still hanging in the fresh, newly free air, as the haunting sound of “Misty” plays—forever linking the song to the film’s unforgettable final act.

Music is woven into the film’s very fabric, not just as background but as a living, breathing presence. The jazz standards, the sultry DJ patter, and the now-iconic “Misty” all heighten the film’s emotional stakes, turning the soundtrack into a kind of siren song that lures both Dave and us deeper into the story’s dangerous undertow.

The film’s most tender and visually poetic moment unfolds during the love scene between Dave and Tobie, set to Roberta Flack’s iconic “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Bathed in golden California sunlight and slow, dreamy camera movements, the scene radiates a sense of deep intimacy and vulnerability. The song’s gentle, aching beauty perfectly captures the mood of new love—or, I should say, an old love Dave is finally ready to commit to—and bittersweet longing.

Even though Eastwood’s direction is both economical and expressive, it makes the most of the film’s modest budget while imbuing every scene with a sense of place and time. The editing is tight, the pacing unhurried but never slack, allowing the dread to build organically. Evelyn’s violent confrontations, Dave’s desperate attempts to break free, and the final showdown in the isolated house are staged with a raw, almost documentary realism that makes the film’s psychological horror feel all the more immediate.

By the time the credits roll, Play Misty for Me has done more than tell a story—it’s mapped the landscape of obsession, seduction, and danger with a clarity that still resonates. The film’s legacy is undeniable: it set the template for countless thrillers to come, from Fatal Attraction to Single White Female, but remains singular for its blend of groovy style, psychological insight, and the unmistakable chill of a love gone violently wrong.

THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK 1969

The Chilling Solitude of Possession: Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park is a quietly unnerving psychological thriller, a film that unfolds like a meditation on loneliness and longing on the rain-soaked streets of Vancouver. Anchored by Sandy Dennis’s remarkable performance as Frances Austen—a wealthy, emotionally stunted woman living alone in her inherited apartment—the film is a study in isolation, obsession, and the dangerous places where compassion blurs into control.

The story begins with Frances, surrounded by her much older social circle in her gloomy, stifling home, her emotional distance mirrored by Altman’s layered soundtrack and László Kovács’s muted, drifting cinematography.

Frances’s attention is drawn to a silent, rain-soaked teenage boy (Michael Burns) sitting on a park bench outside her window. Moved by a mix of concern and curiosity, she invites him inside, offering warmth, food, and a bed. The boy remains mute, his silence both a shield and a provocation, and Frances’s nurturing quickly turns to fixation. She locks him in his room at night, buys him new clothes, and fills the air with one-sided conversation, projecting her own loneliness and desire onto this enigmatic stranger.

The boy in That Cold Day in the Park is played by Michael Burns. In the film, his character is credited simply as “The Boy,” and his name is never revealed on screen or in the credits. This deliberate anonymity heightens the story’s sense of mystery and emotional distance, turning him into a kind of blank canvas for Frances’s projections and obsessions. The lack of a name also reinforces the film’s themes of alienation and objectification as he is less a fully realized individual to Frances than a vessel for her loneliness and desires.

Michael Burns’s performance is remarkable for its restraint and subtlety. For much of the film, he communicates through silence and body language, delivering what critics have described as a “Chaplinesque pantomime.” He moves through Frances’s apartment with a mix of vulnerability and quiet calculation, at times exuding a wounded gentleness, at others a hint of danger or opportunism. This ambiguity is key to the film’s tension: we, like Frances, are never quite sure of his intentions, or how much he is playing along versus feeling genuine sympathy or curiosity. When the boy finally speaks, it’s clear he’s not mute at all, deepening the psychological complexity of both his character and the film as a whole.

Michael Burns had a significant presence in this genre around the same time. In particular, he played George in The Mad Room (1969), a psychological horror drama starring Stella Stevens and Shelley Winters, which I’ve written about earlier in this series.

In that film, Burns’s character is one of two siblings released from a mental institution after being accused of murdering their parents as children. The Mad Room similarly explores themes of trauma, suspicion, and psychological instability, and Burns brings a comparable sense of ambiguity and emotional depth to his role as George. His performances in both films showcase his ability to convey complex, troubled young men caught in the webs of adult dysfunction and madness. His understated, enigmatic presence in That Cold Day in the Park and The Mad Room helped define a certain kind of vulnerable yet inscrutable youth in late-1960s psychological thrillers.

Altman’s direction is subtle but relentless, using long takes, extreme zooms, and patient panning shots to heighten the sense of voyeurism and emotional claustrophobia.

The boy, we learn, is not actually mute, he slips away at night to visit his bohemian sister Nina (Susanne Benton) and her boyfriend, revealing a life far more freewheeling and sexually liberated than Frances’s repressed existence. Yet he returns to Frances, drawn by her vulnerability and perhaps the comfort of her attention, even as her possessiveness grows more desperate and unnerving.

Francis lying on the bed -“I’m not going to get under the covers or anything. I’ll just lay on top. I have to tell you something. If you feel that you want to make love to me, it’s all right. I want you to make love to me. Please.”

The film’s tension builds as Frances’s fantasies of intimacy with the boy collide with the reality of his independence. After a failed attempt to seduce him—delivered to an empty bed, her words falling on a pile of dolls and pillows he has stuffed under the blankets while he’s out on his nightly prowls with his sister—Frances snaps. She nails shut the doors and windows, trapping him in the apartment, her need for connection now transformed into a kind of captivity. In a final, shattering bid to consummate her longing, Frances hires a prostitute (Luana Anders as Sylvia) to sleep with him, as she listens from outside the door.

Sandy Dennis’s Frances moves through the dim apartment like a ghost, her face a mask of heartbreak and unraveling control as she waits and listens for the boy and Sylvia, in the bedroom, doing what she has longed to do. When jealousy and despair finally overwhelm her, Frances bursts in, her movements abrupt and almost childlike, and plunges a knife straight into Sylvia’s heart, sealing her descent into madness. The act is swift, shocking, and eerily silent—blood blooming against Sylvia’s body as she collapses, the room suddenly colder, Frances’s longing manifesting into violence in a single, irrevocable gesture.

The film’s mood is one of chilly, rain-drenched melancholy, with Johnny Mandel’s score and Kovács’s cinematography amplifying the sense of emotional isolation and creeping, suffocating dread.

Altman’s signature overlapping sound design and drifting camera work place us squarely in Frances’s disoriented perspective, making her breakdown both tragic and terrifying. Sandy Dennis’s performance is a masterclass in restraint and vulnerability—her Frances is at once childlike and ancient as an old soul, her need for love palpable but twisted by years of repression and solitude.

Sandy Dennis was renowned for her distinctive, deeply naturalistic approach to acting. A kind of raw, unvarnished vulnerability marked her performances. She brought to the screen and stage a sense of real, lived-in emotion that set her apart from many of her contemporaries. Dennis’s style can often be described as quirky, spontaneous, and idiosyncratic: she had a gift for embodying characters who seemed genuinely unpredictable, their thoughts and feelings flickering across her expressive face in real time with a jittery, fluttery, fragmented, tender-edged, and exquisitely exposed.

She was brilliant at portraying outsiders, eccentrics, and women on the edge of emotional crisis, making her characters feel both fragile and fiercely alive. Her voice, with its hesitant, sometimes halting cadence, and her subtle physical mannerisms, contributed to a sense of authenticity that made even the most neurotic or awkward characters sympathetic and compelling. Critics and collaborators frequently noted her fearlessness in exposing emotional rawness, as well as her ability to make silence as eloquent as dialogue. I adore her for this brand of unshielded, bold style of acting, which was clear in performances in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966, in particular, her Sylvia Barrett, a young and idealistic teacher in a tough New York City school, in Up the Down Staircase 1967, as Jill Banford in Mark Rydell’s adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s 1923 novella The Fox 1967, and Arthur Hiller’s The Out-Of-Towners 1970, where she starred along side Jack Lemmon. Sandy Dennis was a bona fide member of the feline appreciation society. Her home was practically a cat conclave, which made her a kindred spirit for cat fanatics like me. It’s just another reason I love her!

That Cold Day in the Park still stands up for me as an early example of Altman’s fascination with female psychological breakdown, a theme he would revisit in Images and 3 Women. The film’s refusal to offer easy answers or conventional thrills makes it all the more haunting—a portrait of a woman so desperate for connection that she becomes both jailer and destroyer, her love as suffocating as the rain that never seems to stop falling outside her window. It stands as a criminally unsung tour de force of psycho-sexual horror, shock, and dread.

A REFLECTION OF FEAR 1973

Throught the Lookingglass: The Chilling Enigma of A Reflection of Fear (1973)

A Reflection of Fear is a haunting, deeply peculiar entry in early 1970s psychological horror, directed by acclaimed cinematographer William A. Fraker, who worked closely with director Roman Polanski to create Rosemary’s Baby’s distinctive, unsettling visual style. This film’s surface is lush and luminous, thanks to the evocative work of László Kovács, whose camera transforms the isolated Canadian mansion and its overgrown gardens into a dreamlike, claustrophobic world where reality and delusion become a watercolor wash.

The mood is one of constant unease, a chilly, almost narcotic atmosphere where every room seems haunted by secrets and every shadow hints at something unspeakable.

At the center is Marguerite, played by Sondra Locke in a performance that is both unsettling and fragile. Marguerite is a 15-year-old girl (though Locke was nearly twice that age), living in near-total isolation with her brittle mother Katherine (Mary Ure) and imperious grandmother Julia (Signe Hasso). Marguerite’s world is crowded with dolls—especially Aaron, her confidant and alter ego—and she spends her days talking to them, tending her science experiments, and injecting herself with mysterious medication. Her sense of reality is already tenuous when the story begins, but the return of her estranged father, Michael (Robert Shaw), now seeking a divorce and accompanied by his fiancée, Anne (Sally Kellerman), triggers a spiral into obsession and violence.

Fraker’s direction leans into the film’s psychosexual undercurrents and taboo anxieties. Marguerite’s yearning for her father quickly becomes disturbingly intense, her affection crossing boundaries and unsettling everyone, especially Anne, who watches in disbelief as Michael indulges his daughter’s every whim. The film’s most disquieting moments come from Locke’s performance: the way Marguerite clings to Michael, her gaze flickering between innocence and something far darker, and the scenes where she embraces or kisses him while Anne looks on in horror. The supporting cast, including Shaw’s quietly troubled Michael and Kellerman’s increasingly desperate Anne, adds to the film’s air of emotional paralysis, as if the entire household is drugged by the mansion’s oppressive history.

As the story unfolds, a series of murders shatters the fragile peace. First Katherine, then Julia, are killed in their beds by a shadowy figure—Marguerite’s “Aaron,” whose voice (provided by Gordon Anderson) echoes through the mansion with eerie, childlike menace.

The film’s editing, shaped by studio cuts to secure a PG rating, often jumps abruptly between scenes, heightening the sense of disorientation and leaving violence more implied than shown. Yet the lack of blood only amplifies the psychological horror, making each act feel more like a fevered hallucination than a crime.

The climax hits a breaking point of confusion and revelation. After a failed attempt at seduction and a disastrous encounter with a local boy, Marguerite’s world unravels completely. In a final confrontation, Michael is attacked by a hooded figure, revealed to be Marguerite, lost in the persona of Aaron. As she collapses, sobbing and unmasked, the film delivers its final, devastating twist: Michael learns via a recording that Marguerite was, in fact, born a boy, a secret kept hidden by her mother and grandmother. This revelation recasts the film’s entire psychosexual dynamic, transforming Marguerite’s identity crisis and longing for her father into something even more tragic and disturbing.

Marguerite’s upbringing as a girl was a deliberate act of concealment and control by her mother, Katharine, and grandmother, Julia, meant to sever her from her true identity and the outside world, with devastating consequences. She was kept living as a girl rather than a boy due to the controlling and deeply repressive motivations of her mother and grandmother. The film reveals that Marguerite was raised as a girl, a secret hidden from both Marguerite and her estranged father; a decision rooted in the older woman’s desire to isolate Marguerite from men and the outside world, reflecting their own deep mistrust and even hatred of men.

Throughout the film, there are hints of this agenda: Katherine and Julia are depicted as cold, emotionally distant, and highly controlling, keeping Marguerite cloistered within the mansion and away from any male influence. They go so far as to remove the labels from Marguerite’s medication and discourage any contact with her father, fearing that even a glimpse of Michael might tempt her to certain idolatry of the man and awaken desires they wish to suppress. The grandmother’s line, “We were so careful, Michael. We were so careful,” and the mother’s warnings about men—“Don’t ever let a man touch you,” virtually saying it’ll mean death, underscores their determination to control Marguerite’s identity and sexuality.

The reveal at the film’s end—that Marguerite is biologically male—casts all of this in a tragic and disturbing light. The mother and grandmother’s motivations appear to be a toxic mix of misandry, sexual repression, and a desire to erase masculinity from Marguerite’s life entirely, perhaps as a way of protecting her from the world or punishing Michael for leaving. Their actions ultimately create a profoundly confused and isolated individual, whose identity crisis and longing for connection drive the film’s psychological horror.

Fred Myrow’s score, at times placid and at others discordant, weaves through the film like a ghost, reinforcing the sense of unreality and unease.

The performances—especially Locke’s haunted, otherworldly Marguerite—anchor the film’s dreamlike tone, while Fraker’s visual style keeps us off-balance, never quite sure what is real and what is fantasy, what is fact and what is shadow.

A Reflection of Fear is not a film of easy answers or conventional shocks. Instead, it lingers in the mind as a study in isolation, repression, and the monstrous consequences of secrets kept too long. It’s a film that unsettles more than it terrifies, leaving behind a residue of unease—a reflection, perhaps, of the fears that are not willing to be named.

Sunday Nite Surreal-A Reflection of Fear-William Fraker’s Directorial Foray Beyond The Outer Limits into a Psycho-Sexual Miasma

#115 down, 35 to go! Your EverLovin’ Joey, formally & affectionately known as MonsterGirl!

70s Cinema: Runaway Trains, Racing toward oblivion, Psycho-sexual machinations, and ‘the self loathing whore’ Part 2

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

 

1:23 pm. Grand Central Station, New York. A packed commuter train is hijacked. A ransom is set – at one million dollars. The subway is a closed system. For the four hijackers, surely there is no way out. But they have a deadly plan.

Directed by Joseph Sargent  (Colossus: The Forbin Project 1970, White Lightning 1973, predominantly a director for television series and made for TV movies- Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Invaders) with a screenplay by Peter Stone (known writer Charade 1963, Father Goose 1963, Sweet Charity 1969) The iconic sneeze which leads to one of the most memorable endings in 70s films was actually conceptualized by Stone. And based on the best-selling American crime novel by John Godey.

Stunning visual auteur and cinematographer  Owen Roizman (The French Connection 1971, The Exorcist 1973, The Stepford Wives 1975, Three Days of the Condor 1975, Network 1976, True Confessions 1981) and driving score by David Shire (The Conversation 1974, All the President’s Men 1976, Saturday Night Fever 1977, Norma Rae 1979). Like the score, the film itself begins with the sense of dialogue and characterizations just as accelerated as a runaway train. The initial part of the film is completely immersed underground with its murky greens, grays, and shadows lit only by the subway lamps.

Director Joseph Sargent instructed Owen Roizman to shoot the picture on a Wide Screen, which would create the effect of not having a high ceiling, the overhead and bottom of the screen being cut off giving the film more of the closeness and claustrophobia of being in a subway car. They filmed the picture at The Spike in Brooklyn which was totally closed off at the time. Director Sargent referred to it as “hell on earth” and actor Robert Shaw dubbed it “Dante’s Inferno.” Like The French Connection and 3 Days of the Condor also filmed by Roizman, these were films that were at a defining time in history portraying a gritty New York lensed with a perspective toward realism. The camera’s were lightweight, moved quickly through the streets, and utilized natural lighting. The colors are muted browns, faded greens, and grays. The film demonstrates the alienation of the city and the urban nightmare.

One of the films from the seventies utilizes the subway as a symbol of the ‘changing nature of the city partly from the perspective of its citizens primarily its commuters.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is one of the most definitive films of the seventies that features an all-star cast of great character actors with standout performances by Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber, Tom Pedi as Caz Dolowicz who only gives a damn about his trains running on time.

“Oh, come on. If I’ve got to watch my language just because they let a few broads in, I’m going to quit. How the hell can you run a goddamn railroad without swearing?”

James Broderick as Denny Doyle’s head motorman, Dick O’Neill as the foul-mouthed Correll, Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone, Rudy Bond as Police Commissioner, Kenneth McMillan as the Borough Commander, Doris Roberts as the Mayor’s wife.

And of course, our four colorful criminals, Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) Mr. Green (Martin Balsam) Hector Elizondo (Mr. Gray), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman ) match the primary tones of the film. Their faces are obscured by disguises that are caricatures.  An interesting note the color of the men’s hats corresponds with their pseudonyms. In contrast to the earthy tones of the film, Garber wears a banana-yellow tie. Quentin Tarantino paid homage to the titular nicknames in his ultra-violent Reservoir Dogs 1992.

There is no real set-up or background relationship between the four hijackers. After seeing Martin Balsam exit a yellow cab, and Shire’s dynamic score comes into play, the film has an immediate tempo of being out of control. The film opens with one of the most popular scores of the seventies, David Shires, driving aural waves of dissonant jazz. With military-type snare drum rolls and resounding trombones and electronica. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is perhaps one of the most iconic action thrillers of the seventies era. Opening with the dynamic life force of a pulsing New York City. Cabs, bodies in motion, unique to the city with its dialect “Fifty Foist Street” And the mania of people rushing down below in the subways, hot, grimy, and anonymous.

When subway line Pelham One Two Three which is a subway car that begins from the Lexington Avenue station is hijacked by four seemingly random criminals Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, Mr. Gray, and Mr. Brown all dressed in hats to match the colors of their pseudonyms, overcoats, black-rimmed glasses, and phony mustaches it throws the New York City transit into chaos. The Transit Authority personnel as well as the subway’s passengers are portrayed as stereotypically New Yorkers, rough around the edges of various ethnicities.

The train’s passengers are represented as a row of assorted stereotypes including the wise-but-kvetchy Jew, the “fairy,” the Black pimp, the hysterical Hispanic woman, the disarrayed mother who has no control over her children, the long-haired hippie, the tough as nails whore and the clueless drunk who sleeps through the whole nightmare. What comes off with this device is that the ordeal of the story is just an everyday occurrence on the New York City subway.

And these passengers are actually listed in the credits as The Maid, The Mother, The Homosexual, The Secretary, The Delivery Boy, The Salesman, The Hooker, The Old Jewish Man, The Older Son, The Spanish Woman, The Alcoholic (who sleeps through the entire seizure), The Pimp, Coed #1, Coed #2, The Hippie and The W.A.S.P. One of my complaints of seventies cinema — though it is one of my favorite sub-genres of cinema– is the inherent misogyny and easily permissive racism and homophobia.

Mr. Blue calmly informs them that they want one million dollars or they will execute one hostage for every minute they don’t receive the ransom.

Dick O’Neill’s gruffness is delivered fluently as he grunts over the microphone at Mr. Blue “Keep dreamin’ maniac!”

Walter Matthau, who is the master of owning any picture he’s in, throws out more hilarious one-liners which bring the much-needed levity to the nervous tension. That is not to say that Tom Pedi and Dick O’Neill veteran stage and character actors don’t supply their share of snarky New York witticisms.

While the commuting passengers are concentrating on getting to where they need to go, one at a time the four hijackers board the train. Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw who plays a very composed and menacing British Mercenary). Accompanying Mr. Blue is Mr. Green, the continually sneezing Martin Balsam (who was fired from the transit department as a motormen suspected of trafficking drugs in the train cars) Later Garber figures out that one of the hijackers must have knowledge of handling a train, “Somebody down there knows how to drive a train. You don’t pick that up watching Sesame Street.”

Mr. Green (Shaw) enters the conductor’s car and holds a gun on the head of motorman James Broderick. “I’m taking your train.”

They begin to set up their scheme. Hector Elizondo who plays Mr. Gray is an unstable psychopath whose infantile outbursts and uncontrollable belligerence show him capable of violence at any given moment. “I’ll shoot your pee pee off.” Later on Mr. Green tells Mr. Blue that he doesn’t trust Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo who is playing to type) and to keep an eye on Mr. Gray “I also think that he is mad. Why do you think they threw him out of the Mafia.”

Lastly Mr. Brown enters with a box for long-stem roses. When the time comes, they pull out high-powered automatic weapons and announce their plans to the horrified New Yorkers.

George Lee Miles as the pimp and Mr. Green (Robert Shaw) exchange cutting remarks as commentary on the post-Vietnam weariness and racism. “What’s wrong dude? Ain’t you never seen a sunset before?”

While the takeover of Pelham One Two Three is underway, we are privy to the pressurized control room where the core of operations happens. Lt. Garber is showing a group of Japanese men who run the subway system in Tokyo, the works while throwing out wisecracks, “In the course of a normal work week, the average TA policeman deals with such crimes as robbery, assault, murder, drunkenness illness, vandalism, mishegas, abusiveness, sexual molestation, exhibitionism… “ means of mocking the four visiting Japanese executive’s assumed that they do not speak perfect English. Garber tells Rico- “Take these monkeys up to 13” Garber is enlightened after these very quietly polite men tell him that it was a most interesting tour.

The film boasts its built-in racism and visits its bias through a series of faux pas. Garber (Walter Matthau) has the privilege of his comedic traits and can get away with lines as when he meets Inspector Daniels who is black played by Julius Harris. Garber uncomfortable tells him, “I hadn’t realized you were… so tall.”

Kenneth McMillan veteran character actor adds his bellicose bluster to the film!

Of course, there are also the prevalent acceptable and misguided jokes in 70s films wielding homophobia. As seen in 70s films for example, the psychopathic drag queen in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and the flaming hitchhikers in Vanishing Point (1971) Garber assures the undercover long-haired hippie cop who’s been wounded and lying face down on the tracks, “We’ll have an ambulance here in no time, Miss.”

Along with his colleagues who assume they don’t speak English. Lt Rico ( Jerry Stiller ) adds his comedic genius for instance when he tells the executives, “We had a bomb scare in the Bronx yesterday, it turned out to be a cantaloupe!” 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not only a tight-moving tribute to the implicit action films that emerged during the seventies, but it is also dominated by some of the best dialogue of that decade’s action/thriller genre.

Once the hijackers have taken control of the subway train the command center tries to raise them on the radio.

“How come that gate isn’t locked?” “Who’s gonna steal a subway car?”

Once the control center realizes that something is wrong, they watch on the computerized board that tracks all the trains. The four men disconnected the last set of cars and released a group of passengers with the head motorman leaving the front car, the conductor, and 18 passengers.

“For Jesus Christ’s Sake, the dumb bastard is moving backward.”

Meanwhile, at the control center, they see that the train has stopped between stations. “Well stopped is better than backwards.”

They inform the passengers, “What’s happening is you’re all being held by four very dangerous men with machine guns.”

What the control center sees is that Pelham has powered off their radio and jumped its load. Mr. Green’s nose begins its trail of sneezes and eventual Gesundheits which will become part of the plot’s shtick.

Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) in his usual chillingly sober manner tells Garber “Your train has been taken.” He informs Garber of three essential points. 1) Pelham is in our control 2) We have automatic weapons and 3) We have no scruples about killing. One of the most central forces of the suspense is how Robert Shaw’s unwavering voice sounds so wickedly, deliciously deadpan when he takes up that microphone to talk to Walter Matthau.

They want $1,000,000 for the release of the passengers. Garber asks “Who am I speaking to?”

Blue stiffly tells him, “I’m the man who stole your train.”

The old Jewish passenger asks Mr. Blue “Excuse me sir what’s gonna happen if you don’t get what you want?” “Excuse me, sir, we will get what we want.”

Earl Hindman as the more subdued Mr. Brown

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a pragmatic depiction of inured and balsy New Yorkers at that time in the city. One of the passengers, the prostitute tells the hijackers, “What do you mean you’re hijacking the train? I have an important appointment.” 

Mr. Blue doing the crossword puzzle while making his deadly serious demands…

Mr. Gray “Hold it right there, cowboy!”

Caz Dolowicz “Who the fuck are you?”

Mr. Gray “Well you’ll find out if you take one more step!”

Caz Dolowicz “I’m warnin’ you, mister, that’s city property you’re fooling around with!

Mr. Gray “Well that’s too fucking bad!”

Caz Dolowicz Why didn’t you go grab a goddamn airplane like everybody else?”

Mr. Gray “Cause we’re afraid of flyin’! Now get back or I’ll shoot your goddam ass off!”

Caz Dolowicz “The hell with you, I’m comin’ on board!”

Mr. Gray “I warned ya, stupid!”

It is immediately after Mr. Green warns Mr. Blue that Mr. Gray is mad, that he opens fire on Caz Dolowicz. When Fat Caz (Tom Pedi) goes underground and tramples the tracks insisting to get aboard his train, crazy Mr. Gray opens up on him with his machine gun.

Nathan George (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) as Ptl. James who is monitoring the siege down in the tunnel. Rico asks if Caz Dolowicz is dead. “Wouldn’t you be Lt.?”

Dick O’Neill as Frank Correll bellyaches throughout the entire film. He does not care that the subway is under siege. He is the epitome of the perceived typical attitudes of an older generation of New Yorkers who only see the hijacking as an inconvenience to him for keeping his trains scheduled on time. “Screw the goddamned passengers.”  “What do they expect for their lousy 35c – to live forever?!”

Garber hears Mr. Green sneeze and there begins the first Gesundheit” “Thank you” replies Mr. Green casually.

The mayor (Lee Wallace) laughably resembles Mayor Koch who wouldn’t become Mayor until 1978-1989, is portrayed as an incompetent bureaucrat surrounded by his nurse, tissues and a trudge of indecision, who needs advice from the real brains in Gracie Mansion his wife Doris Roberts.

Frank Correll (Dick O’Neill) tells Garber “You’re playing grab ass with a bunch of goddam pirates.”

Garber follows his hunch and has them start to go through the files for any motormen discharged for cause. In the meantime, they are told to restore power, turn all signals green, and remove all police from the tunnel. With all the details worked out and going their way, Garber figures they also have a plan to make their escape out of the subway tunnels.

Everyone is baffled when Pelham starts to move too soon before Command Central has everything set up, and everyone in the control room keeps asking — who’s moving? Garber responds, “What’s the matter with everybody? How many hijacked trains we got around here, anyway?”

With the green lights on the train will be able to continue on without being stopped, and this doesn’t trouble Garber at first because he knows there is a safety catch involved referred to as “Dead Man’s Feature” which is a handle the train is equipped with in the event the motorman dies while driving the train and they need to come to a stop. Pelham stops below 18th Street. They haven’t cleared the tracks yet. Garber orders cops at every point of the tunnel and exits. They figure that the four won’t be able to get off the train without being stopped. What they don’t know is that Mr. Green has constructed a makeshift metal bar that acts as an arm to hold down the Dead Man’s Feature and while they sneak off by an exit in the Village the train and its passengers are now speeding out of control with all the green lights go and no way to stop it from heading toward a crash.

“No one’s on the breaks!” “There’s nobody driving the fucking train!”

My favorite, is Martin Balsam as Mr. Green aka Harold Longman rolling in the cash…

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying hang on to your seats and stay tuned for Part 3!

70s Cinema: Runaway Trains, Racing toward oblivion, Psycho-sexual machinations, and ‘the self loathing whore’ Part 1


The early seventies witnessed a fertile moment in film-making that reflected a uniquely framed vision of sexual exploration and an ever-changing measurement of morality. The studios too were taking more risks with their films conveying realism. What developed on screen was an explosion of symbolic portrayals featuring sex and violence and explicit imagery for American audiences to process. With the arrival of the women’s movement during the mid-sixties through the seventies, until it was killed off in the eighties by Reagenism, these films did not push forward an evolved perspective or positive representation of women. Often the suggestion of women’s sexual freedom was portrayed as demeaning and counter-productive to women’s empowerment. As feminist theorist and critic Molly Haskell writes “The ten years from 1963 to 1973 have been the most disheartening in screen history.”

Conversely, men were portrayed as rogue outsiders and anti-heroes, not unlike noir figures but pushing the envelope with a hyper-violent masculinity often without the usual fatalistic culmination of judgment and universal law that bound their destiny. When they die, it is their decision, they are in a dance with death, and it is not an unmitigated penalty for breaking the rules. In particular, these themes are seen within the suspense-thriller.

The seventies offered a gritty, stylized world that enhanced and synthesized focus on the dark underbelly of society, cultural unrest, paranoia, masochism, neurosis, and psycho-sexual wiles. From American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations — Movies and the Exploitation of Excess by Mia Mask, “Women Take Center Stage: Klute and McCabe & Mrs. Miller- “For feminist critics and scholars, Alan J. Pakula’s Klute perfectly exemplifies this period’s ambivalence toward women, particularly in regard to its prostitute-heroine Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda). The film recasts and updates conventions of classic film noir by centralizing the investigatory/confessional pattern while making sexuality figure more obviously in the narrative.”

Klute (1971)

One man is missing. Two girls lie dead. …and someone breathing on the other end of the phone.

You’d never take her for a call girl. You’d never take him for a cop.

“There are little corners of everyone that are better left alone.”

Klute (1971) directed by Alan J. Pakula (The Parallax View 1974, All the President’s Men 1976, producer To Kill a Mockingbird 1962, Love with the Proper Stranger, Up the Down Staircase and director of Sophie’s Choice 1982) written by brothers Andy Lewis and Dave Lewis who mainly wrote for television drama series. Cinematography by Gordon Willis nicknamed The Prince of Darkness (The Landlord 1970, The Godfather 1972, The Godfather II 1974, The Paper Chase 1973, Annie Hall 1977).

Pakula on Willis and setting up the framing of the cinematography- “From the visual point of view, I wanted Klute to be a vertical film. And with Gordon Willis, the director of photography, I tried to go against the horizontal format of Panavision, by seeking out verticals. Horizontals open out, create a pastoral feeling, and I wanted tension. Bree’s apartment should have been seen as if at the end of a long tunnel. I framed a lot of shots with the back of another character in front, to mask a part of the screen, or made use of other sombre surfaces as masks, in order to create this feeling of claustrophobia which reflects the life of this girl.” – from 1972

The evocative score adds to the illusory tension and arresting mood of the film. The music is written by Michael Small (The Stepford Wives 1975, Night Moves 1975, Marathon Man 1976, Audrey Rose 1977, The Postman Always Rings Twice 1981, Black Widow 1987). Small’s haunting lullaby blankets the film in a pensive swaddle, with the uneasy tinkling of a piano like a childlike music box and vocalizations. The score awakens a voyeuristic ambiance as if someone is watching, which they are– throughout the entire film.

“New York City as a site of, and metaphor for, the extremes of urban existence.

It places them in film history, New York City history, and U.S. urban history more generally, finding that they offer an update on earlier century narratives of the connections between urban areas and deviant sexuality. In this modern version, it is not just a moral tale but also an economic one, where, because of the historical decline of the U.S.city and of New York in particular,sex work becomes a plausible, if unsettling means of support.These films find both narrative and spatial terms for advancing the contemporary anti-urban narrative, envisioning New York as an impinging vertical space and seeing possible redemption only in the protagonists leaving the city.” From Stanley Corkin’s Sex and the City in Decline: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Klute (1971)-Journal of Urban History

The film stars Jane Fonda (who was coming off playing ingenues in Barefoot in the Park and Barbarella when she had her breakthrough performance in Sidney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses Don’t They? 1969) as call-girl Bree Daniels with complex inner life, Donald Sutherland as the quiet spectator detective John Klute, Charles Cioffi as psycho Peter Cable, Roy Scheider as pimp Frank Ligourin, Dorothy Tristan as Arlyn Page, Rita Gam as Trina Gruneman, Vivian Nathan as the psychotherapist, Morris Strassberg as Mr. Goldfarb, the nice old Jewish john who works in the garment district, and Shirley Stoler (The Honeymoon Killers 1969) as Mama Reese. With appearances by Jean Stapleton as Mr. Goldfarb’s secretary, Richard Jordan as the young man who kisses Jane Fonda in the bar scene, porn star Harry Reems at the Discothèque, and Candy Darling. 

The film brings into play various traditions of film noir as it lays out the search for the missing Gruneman and emphasizes the relationship between the cop and the call girl.

Klute was nominated for two academy awards, best actress and best screenplay, with Jane Fonda winning the Oscar.

From Mark Harris “menace seems to choke every frame, contains almost no violence at all”

The use of tape recorders as visually recurring iconography “finally deployed as a monstrous psychological weapon at the film’s climax.”

“When Alan J. Pakula began preparing for the production of Klute (1971), he screened a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films…{…} instead he came away dispirited at the thought that he was about to make might contradict one of Hitchcock’s central principles: “You don’t try to do a character study in a melodrama” Pakula said. “Klute, of course, is a violation of that.”

Klute features Donald Sutherland as the film’s protagonist John Klute, a Tuscarora Pennsylvania private investigator hired to locate a friend Tom Gruneman who has vanished in New York City and may be living a double life. Obscene letters to an NYC prostitute have been uncovered in his desk at work “written by a very disturbed man”. Gruneman went missing six months prior and John Klute offers to leave his suburban shelter to investigate in the big bad city. The trail leads Klute to a complicated and seductive New York call girl Bree Daniels an “emotionally introspective” prostitute (skillfully brought out by Jane Fonda). Bree is an unwitting connection to a brutal murder and Klute becomes her paternalistic protector/lover. Bree is shut off from her feelings, driven by her instincts of suspicion, ambivalence, and low-self esteem. “I wish I was faceless and body-less and be left alone.”

Bree is a complex character who seeks to emotionally remove herself from society through the flawed principle that she is in control of her life and her body. Frequenting a psychotherapist, going on modeling cattle-calls, (similarly, she is peddling her flesh, though legally and publicly) studying acting, smoking grass, and reading books like Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs, a primer of the seventies metaphysical movement. Living in her own private world of her Manhattan apartment with her calico cat, Bree surrounds herself with the only space that truly insulates and isolates her from the vicious and people-eating world. A world of sin, glitter, and wickedness. A world of voyeurs.

Klute watches as well as listens to Bree’s conversations recording equipment to tap her phone from his little dank room as one of her voyeurs. She tells him “Go get those tapes and we’ll have a party.”

“Men would pay $200 for me, and here you are turning down a freebie. You could get a perfectly good dishwasher for that.”

She also admits to him that she’s in the midst of paranoia “I’m afraid of the dark, it’s just nerves I’m a nervous broad.” But this is not paranoia, the fear is real… everyone is watching everyone else.

He watches her when she visits the old Jewish widow where Bree dresses like a cabaret singer, regaling the gentle Mr. Goldfarb of her nights in Cannes with a sophisticated older man not unlike himself. She tells Klute he never lays a hand on her. Klute’s silent, morally superior, unemotional manner seems to provoke Bree’s animosity toward family-type men and uptight provincial.

“What’s your bag, Klute? What do you like? Are you a talker? A button freak? Maybe you like to get your chest walked around with high-heeled shoes. Or make ’em watch you tinkle. Or maybe you get off wearing women’s clothes. Goddamned hypocrite squares!” When he asks her about the john who tried to kill her and beat her up, “he wasn’t kidding, usually it’s a fake out.”

She shrugs Klute off, “Look, will you please just try to get it from my side? A year ago I was in the life full time. I was living on Park Avenue. It was a very nice apartment, leather furniture… and then the cops dropped on me, they caged me. They started asking me about a guy, some guy, that I’m supposed to have seen a year before that. Two years ago! He could be in Yemen. Gruneman… what does that mean? It’s a name! I don’t know him! And they start showing me these pictures, and they don’t mean anything to me. And then they started asking me if I’ve been getting letters from some guy out in Cabbageville.”

After Bree comes down to Klute’s little room in her pajamas and they have sex, she mocks him “Don’t feel bad about losing your virtue. I sort of knew you would. Everybody always does.” Once Bree starts to feel some kind of emotion toward Klute, she feels the need to destroy it, she had more control over her tricks.

During her various appointments with her shrink, Bree asks her “Why do I still want to trick?” Her therapist becomes more forceful explaining that she can’t just fix Bree, telling her she has “no magic potion.”  “Cause when you’re a call girl you can control it. They want a woman and I know I’m good… And for an hour… for an hour, I’m the best actress in the world and the best fuck in the world.” “Why do you say you’re the best actress in the world.” “Well, because it’s an act.”

There is a bit of not only a slight intrusion of a laugh, in the midst of all the darkness when Bree is in bed with a john and she’s doing an acting job as if he’s turning her on while he’s on top of her, she coos for him- “Oh my angel! Oh my angel!” looking over his shoulder at her watch… It’s telling of how Bree can cut herself off from being a sex worker and the men she is with, how she aspires to be an actress, and basically how many women may feel while they are having sex they feel nothing. Bree is great at role-playing believes there is nothing wrong with it morally and doesn’t enjoy it physically.

Bree- “You don’t have to feel anything, care for anybody, just lead them by the ring in their nose. In the direction that they think they want to go in. Get a lot of money out of them in as short of period of time as possible. And you control it, and you call the shots, and I always feel just great afterwards.”

Therapist- “And you enjoyed it?” 

Bree- “No”

Therapist- “Why not? You said there’s nothing wrong with it. Why not?”

Bree- “Well there’s a difference. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it morally, I didn’t enjoy it physically. I came to enjoy it because it made me feel good. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone. It made me feel like I had some control over myself that I had some control over my life. That I could determine things for myself.”

We learn about Bree’s impressions of the world, her motivations, and hints at past trauma through the scenes involving sessions with her therapist (Vivian Nathan). As a neo-noir film, it follows that the heroine experiences alienation and is punished for her female sexuality and excesses. Even as the film opens depicting a scene at a ‘family’ dinner, the intrusion of Bree’s lifestyle shows the downfall and breakdown of the American family. Invading the bourgeois landscape, we see the tableau of desperate junkies, disco dives, and the pimp’s flat, — all decadent and corrupt secret underworlds of the city, damned for their self-indulgence, materialism, and perverted gratifications.

In some ways, there are certain divergences from the noir traditions of the 1940s. There is a linear movement in the narrative with the hero retaining control of the events, in contrast to the revolving story, reversals, and breaks in the plot. In terms of the investigation and the heroine’s sexuality, Bree’s place is different within the story, she is not the catalyst of Tom Gruneman’s fate she is the signpost to discovering his outcome. Therefore the relationship between John Klute and Bree is very different from what is usually the case in classic film noir. In this way, Pakula explores the potential of the genre through a contemporary lens. “The metaphoric power of noir conventions is brought into more conscious play” (Gledhill)

Another consideration of Pakula’s film depicting a feminist backlash is how the women are positioned as ‘objects’ and physical products, emblematic not only by the scenes where Bree is selling her body but where she sits in a line-up with other beautiful women waiting to be chosen for a modeling job. The agency executives’ heads are cut off in the scene which accentuates the human disconnection and impersonal enterprise of being picked for profitability and worth. Each one is scanned and then dismissed because of their perceived faults, both models and prostitutes symbolize the fetishization of desirability and society’s measurement of a woman’s value. If dissecting the film’s symbology more closely there are carefully placed clues as suggested by Judith Gustafson who observes the images behind the model’s impersonal scrutiny and the wall photos behind them of a face dotted in silver-like ‘bullet holes’ on either side depicted by the identical image yet in negative that makes the female face appear as an ‘alien being.’

“Has anybody talked to you about the financial arrangements? Well that depends naturally on how long you want me for, and what you want to do. I know you, it will be very nice. Well I’d like to spend the evening with you if its, if you’d like that. Have you ever done it with a woman before, paying her? Do you like it? I mean I have the feeling that that turns you on very particularly. What turns me on is because I have a good imagination, and I like pleasing. Do you mind if I take my sweater off. Well I think in the confines of one’s house one should be free of clothing and inhibitions. Oh inhibitions are nice, cause its always to nice to overcome. Don’t be afraid, I’m not. As long as you don’t hurt me, more than I like to be hurt. I will do anything you ask. You should never be ashamed of things like that. I mean you mustn’t be. You know there’s nothing wrong. Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I think the only way that any of us can ever be happy is to, is to let it all hang out ya know. Do it all and fuck it!”

When Klute meets Bree she toys with him, flaunting her independence and manifesting a casual attitude about his investigation. Her self-aligned liberation dictates contempt for convention and criticism. Hard-edged Bree enjoys her freedom though she is seduced by the need to pick up the phone and maintain her high-class status as a pimp-free call girl. Roy Scheider plays her old predatory pimp Frank Ligourin who flashes his Italian silk shirts and his Mephistophelean smile. Ligourin and call-girl Janie McKenna who was jealous of Bree are the ones responsible for sending Bree to the psycho John who beat her up. “put the freak onto Bree.”

Though it’s not what drives the story, in the darkened halls of the film is the sadistic degenerate Peter Cable (first-time actor Charles Cioffi), affluent businessman and friend and associate of the missing Tom Gruneman (Robert Milli), and detective John Klute.

Cable is a psychopathic misogynist who obsessively listens to the secret recordings of his exploits with Bree. He begins stalking her, suspecting that she may reveal his identity as the perverted John who beat her up and murdered her friend Janie and eventually kills another prostitute, a strung-out junkie Arlyn Page (Dorothy Tristan).

“Make a man think that he’s accepted. It’s all a great big game to you. I mean, you’re all obviously too lazy and too warped to do anything meaningful with your lives so you prey upon the sexual fantasies of others. I’m sure it comes as no great surprise to you when I say that there are little corners in everyone which were better off left alone; sicknesses, weaknesses, which-which should never be exposed. But… that’s your stock in trade, isn’t it – a man’s weakness? And I was never really fully aware of mine… until you brought them out.”

Pretty much into the beginning of the picture, we know who the killer is. The plotline is more focused on the journey and relationship/character study of silent John Klute and turbulent Bree Daniels, and drawing the killer out into the open. It is the examination of the darker side of human nature, collective disorder, and the undercurrent of psycho-sexual machinations as one of the central points of the film.

According to Joan Mellen not only is Klute a study in female sexuality, villain Peter Cable is the “projection of Bree’s self-contempt — a materialization of her fear of the dark.” Though the film presents an atmosphere of paranoia the threat is very real. Cable “He also represents what she believes she deserves, the all-destroying punisher who will make her pay for having bartered herself so cheaply.”

Jane Fonda’s Bree Daniels is shown in her room as Willis’ camera pulls back it informs us that she is afraid of the phone ringing and the menacing breather on the other end. This is when John Klute first shows up. There is an interesting correlation between the two men, the cop, and the killer. 

The idea that this film is feminist in nature because of the sexual freedom of it’s central character is best challenged by feminist scholar Christine Gledhill. “The ideological project surrounding this version of the independent woman stereotype is the same as when it emerged in the 1890s under the guise of the New Woman… However fascinating, different, admirable the would-be-emancipated woman, struggling to assert her own identity in a male world, and professing a new, nonrepressive sexual morality, in the end she is really neurotic, fragile, lonely and unhappy.”

Critic Pauline Kael had a much different experience of the film upon its initial release, she called Bree Daniels “one of the strongest feminine characters to reach the screen” Though Fonda’s brilliant performance creates a complexity worthy of analysis, in the end, she is still an object of male fantasy.

While the film’s critics focus mainly on feminist shortcomings there is also the understanding by some that it also shines a lens on masculinity. Klute “lacks dynamism” “sexless” and “out of place” perhaps or virtual psychopaths, and castrated males. Perhaps a commentary on men’s sweeping fear of the women’s movement and the transformations of femininity and masculinity. Also, an interesting observation by Mia Mask is how the protagonist John Klute and psychopath Peter Cable though essentially an antithesis of each other’s persona there is an element of a ‘doppelgänger motif’. Diane Giddis points at the threat of Cable, Bree’s potential killer can be seen as the incarnation of the emotional danger she feels threatened by with the emergence of John Klute. From the beginning of the film, “the two men are almost always shown in juxtaposition.” The morning after Bree gets the eerie ‘breather’ phone call from her stalker, Klute appears at her door.

“Like Cable, Klute appears uninvited at her door. He, too, spies on her through windows and from archways. He, too, violates the privacy of her telephone by secretly recording her calls, just as Cable secretly records his session with her. The film even emphasized these parallels by showing the men in similar shots…{…} Ultimately Klute and Cable are two sides of the same male personality. One side punishes women for their sexuality and power plays; the other neutralizes the threat by inviting child-like dependence.” –Judith Gustafson from Cineaste (1981) The Whore with the Heart of Gold

At the time of Klute’s release, it gave the appearance of not only a straight suspense story but a radical film, filled with contradictions between what feminist critics would say is artifice and what represents women in real situations. Within this ‘new American cinema’ the film purports to be about a ‘liberated’ heroine inhabiting the structure of a thriller with an homage to the femme fatales of film noir. The contradictory implications lie between the film’s ‘modernity’, psychotherapy, and the problem of women places it within a humanist realist tradition of European art cinema’ (Gledhill). Yet it also bares the stylistic qualities –a highly detailed visual polish and ‘baroque stereotypes’ in noir thrillers, an atmosphere predominately summoned by American films of the seventies. “The real world and fictional production” Gledhill asserts that stems from the Women’s Movement rather than studies in film theory. The idea of realism and genre are in total opposition to each other. Klute presents as an independent heroine yet each frame reveals the attack on Bree’s free will.

“While realism embraces such cultural values as ‘real life’, truth or credibility, genre production holds negative connotations such as ‘illusion’, ‘myth’, ‘conventionality’, ‘stereotypes’. The Hollywood genres represent the fictional elaboration of a patriarchal culture which produces macho heroes and a subordinate, demeaning and objectified place for women.”

And beyond the constructs of film noir, seventies thriller genre and criticism by feminist theorists of Pakula’s Klute, Bree Daniel’s conflicts are a universal struggle for women’s assertion of love vs the affirmation of self-determination. Bree’s uneasy self-reflection makes the perspective of a movie prostitute a breakthrough characterization. She isn’t a tragic figure nor is she weak or contemptible. Bree explores her compulsion and potential self-destructive behavior as a sex worker as an externalized symptom stemming from past mental and internalized physical injury and she strives to uncover the answers in her own way.

Pakula re-invents some of the noir traditions and places them within an examination of the modern world. With his masterful film, he strives not only for visual ecstasy, the dramatic flourish of the thriller genre, and though there has been acute dissection of his film, he seeks to divulge a truth that becomes a revelation of acting by Jane Fonda.

In a 2019 interview with Jane Fonda conducted by Illeana Douglas, Fonda refers to Alan J. Pakula whom she worked in subsequent films, Comes a Horseman and Rollover, as a “still director.” “He allowed time for things to happen.” Jane Fonda explains that she loves films from the seventies because there was time left for things to happen. “more silence, than words.”

During the rehearsal for Klute Jane Fonda in order to prepare for her role as Bree Daniels, arranged to spend a lot of time with call-girls, streetwalkers and madams. Prostitutes on the bottom rung, strung out from the underbelly of the city and very wealthy madams, whom Fonda said made it clear the more money the client the weirder the sexual appetites and fantasies. She also talked about her decade living in France where she got to know the legendary Madam Claude, famous for taking beautiful women and molding them into high price call girls. Jane Fonda got to know many of them. Many she met were tough, often sexually aggressive she she said, and also sexually confident. She had learned that often they were the survivors of sexual abuse. What she referred having their ‘agency taken away’. These women inspired Fonda to model Bree after them. This is why Fonda’s performance pivots so well from self-confidence to vulnerability.

Illeana Douglas compliments Fonda by telling her that there’s “something going on in your eyes” which made Fonda recall that acting instructor Lee Strasberg had told her the very same thing in his class, that something was going on in her eyes that made him think that more is going on.

Fonda also had what she calls a ‘hair epiphany’. She had just come off filming cult sensation directed by husband, Roger Vadim’s Barbarella where she had all those blonde waves. Her friend hairdresser Paul MacGregor who lived in the village worked on what is now her iconic hair style from Klute.

Jane Fonda worried that as a white privileged middle class actress couldn’t possibly bring to life a prostitute and make it believable. She insisted to her director Alan J. Pakula that he hire Faye Dunaway instead. Pakula burst out laughing.

Jane Fonda was allowed to add a lot of her own insight into the character of Bree, little details and director Pakula often took them as excellent suggestions that worked well with the story. For instance, it was Fonda’s idea to live in the apartment for weeks. She lay there at night as if she were Bree trying to get inside Bree’s head and summon up the things she would do within her private time. We don’t know the backstory behind Bree Daniels many permutations. We are only to privy to hints of the damage.

Jane Fonda conceptualized many of the set’s subtleties. What would Bree read, what would adorn her little space. She thought of having a cat, because cats symbolize independence and Fonda imagined that Bree’s persona wanted a companion that would be more like herself. In many ways, Jane Fonda dressed the set with these little introspective details. The film became a very personal experience for her. And one that initiated her feminist transformation. Even when she was smoking the spliff in her apartment, it wasn’t in the script but she spontaneously began to sing that little hymn, it was very natural and emphasized how real her character was. Fonda tells of how this was a very spontaneous improvisation as a plot detail that was not in the script but struck her at the moment.

Illeana Douglas also astutely pointed out that there was a lot of glamour to the film. There were moments where Klute was framed with close ups of Bree. Even with the evocative Cymbalon melody – the Klezmer (traditional Eastern European Jewish music) movement that guides the scene it reminds of the languid strut of Marlene Dietrich, the allure of Greta Garbo and had the flavor of night club singers in Paris and Germany. When I watched the incredibly thoughtful and in-depth interview it hit me how much that was true. I saw it as clear as day, that Jane Fonda’s aura did truly give off that mystique that essence of glamour of the great actresses’ personae. Superb fashion and costume designer Ann Roth chose the alluring dress that Bree wears when she visits the old man, Mr. Goldfarb. 

Jane Fonda also points out that Bree could have been a great actress but within her craft something would have triggered her to return to selling her body, which is a violation to the soul, and it’s very different than acting, as it comes from a deep place of trauma and the need to control and not open up her heart.

[voiceover] “I have no idea what’s going to happen. I… I just can’t stay in this city, you know? Maybe I’ll come back. You’ll probably see me next week.”

 This is your EverLovin Joey saying see you on the tracks! Part 2 coming up!

 

Sunday Nite Surreal-A Reflection of Fear-William Fraker’s Directorial Foray Beyond The Outer Limits into a Psycho-Sexual Miasma

A REFLECTION OF FEAR 1973

Reflection+of+Fear

If a movie lingers, if it stays with you for hours, days, then it has done something right. I think this film is perhaps as uniquely disturbing as it is underrated & thoughtfully done. The subject matter is perverse and a potent yet slightly murky thriller. A provocative, revolting little psychodrama. One with an eerie, queasy moodiness amidst the ornate set design and restrained performances.

A Reflection of Fear Locke

The ’70s were so good for giving us these kinds of surreal, sinisterly captivating, and unsettling themes. The House That Screamed 1963, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death 1971, Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972, Lemora” A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural 1973, Blood and Lace 1971, What’s The Matter With Helen 1971, so many, too many to mention. Narratives rife with taboos, power struggles, psychosis, ritual murders, and deviance.

Directed by William Fraker (cinematographer on Rosemary’s Baby 1968, Bullitt 1968 uncredited on Incubus 1966 for Roger Corman, and The Day of The Dolphin 1973, Looking for Mr Goodbar 1977).

A Reflection of Fear 1973 was hacked to pieces in order to receive a PG rating for Columbia Pictures. Fraker made his feature debut as cinematographer on one of my favorite psychological thrillers – Curtis Harrington’s cat and mouse thriller GAMES 1967 with Simone Signoret. He was the camera operator for my beloved fantasy ’60s series The Outer Limits TV series 1963-1965. No wonder that this film’s atmosphere is a hazy, dreamy landscape that transcends the outward appearance of reality.

There is nothing wrong with your television set… Do not attempt to adjust the picture, we are controlling transmission: The Transendental Heartbeat of The Outer Limits 1963-1965

László Kovács (Easy Rider ’69, That Cold Day in the Park ’69) enhances the look and feel of the film as director of Photography. A Reflection of Fear is based on a novel by Stanton Forbes called Go To Thy Deathbed with a screenplay by Lewis John Carlino (Seconds 1966, The Mechanic 1972, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea 1976).

Blogger David Furtado from his fabulous Wand’rin’ Star cites in a post from Sondra Locke’s autobiography The Good, The Bad and The Very Ugly- A Hollywood Journey

“Then came a film which was a landmark, professionally and personally: A Reflection of Fear, directed by promising filmmaker William A. Fraker, who had been nominated for several Oscars as a director of photography, and who had directed Monte Walsh with Lee Marvin and Jeanne Moreau, one of the last great and underestimated westerns. Sondra Locke plays the mysterious and unbalanced “ ˜Marguerite’, a girl of sixteen.

As Marguerite in A Reflection of Fear (released in 1973).

“Once again, Gordon and her plotted a scheme to get Fraker interested, since they both thought the role was almost perfect for her. Gordon Anderson even played the “voice” of “˜Aaron’, Marguerite’s alter-ego. Unfortunately, the film was butchered by Columbia since it dealt with themes deemed too strong for the general public. Locke found the attitude ridiculous, even more so because, at that time, “audiences were enthralled with the young girl in The Exorcist, spewing vomit and masturbating with crucifixes”. Nonetheless, she became longtime friends with the director and his future wife Denise, who was very supportive when Locke had serious health problems.”

This is the first film of underrated cult star Sandra Locke. She was perfectly unorthodox, as the odd Agatha Jackson alongside Colleen Camp in DEATH GAME 1977, where they held actor Seymour Cassel hostage and played mind games with him. As Marguerite, she is perfectly chilling in her debut.

Sandra Locke is the captivating young sylph, Marguerite, and Robert Shaw portrays her estranged father, Michael. Mary Ure  (Shaw’s real-life wife at the time) plays her mother, Katherine. Swedish actress Signe Hasso lurks as Marguerite’s sinister grandmother, Julia. This harpy-like matron seems to be the locus of the askew matriarchy that treats Marguerite like a sickly princess caught in a closed universe. It plays like a dark fairy tale where, initially, she appears to be at the mercy of wicked women.

CapturFiles_1

Mary Ure is absolutely gorgeous, seductive, and refined. Signe Hasso is a marvelous actress I’ve admired for a while now; she’s elegant and quite regal though imposing as her character called for. Both Ure & Hasso exude an unsavory perfume.

Look Back in Anger with Richard Burton & Mary Ure
Richard Burton and Mary Ure in Look Back In Anger, 1959

Quirky and affable Sally Kellerman plays Michael’s fiancé, Anne, who worked with Fraker on The Bellero Shield with Martin Landau, airing on Feb. 10th, 1964—one of my favorite The Outer Limits episodes with the Bifrost alien. Fraker also worked on the set with Signe Hasso on The Outer Limits  Production and Decay of Strange Particles, which is yet another superb entry in the short-lived yet transcendently brilliant series.

The Bellero Shield
Chita Rivera, Sally Kellerman, and Martin Landau in The Bellero Shield- The Outer Limits- William Fraker was on the camera crew.

Hasso & George Macready in The Outer LImits
George Macready and Signe Hasso in Production and Decay of Strange Particles -as part of  The Outer Limits 60s TV series.

Gordon Anderson (also the voice of Ratboy 1986) is the voice in the film of the imperceptible Aaron, doll or boy I won’t tell …

Fred Myrow (Soylent Green 1973, Scarecrow 1973, Phantasm 1979)  is responsible for the haunting musical score that is dizzying with lilting harps and mandolin, low muted French horn, music box shimmer, and eerie wavelengths of noise. Joel Schiller is the art director (Rosemary’s Baby 1968, The Muppet Movie) and Phil Abramson (Bullitt 1968, Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 and Raging Bull 1980) does the creepy and suffocating set design which is perfect for the sense of repression, dread, and decay.

A Reflection of Fear has been referred to as a proto-slasher. There is the use of a caped hooded ‘masher.’ Perhaps this film set off a slew of slashers to come, but several reviews have cited a correlation between this film and Hitchcock’s Psycho ’60. Perhaps it’s the bright child with a mother complex who likes horticulture instead of taxidermy. Anyhoo, as an obscure ’70s psycho-sexual thriller, it has its universe to spin in.

If I were to disclose anything because I love a good hint- I could say the closest the film’s storyline comes to is actually an episode of the 1968 TV series  Journey to the Unknown“Miss Belle” with George Maharis and Barbara Jefford, but that’s all I’m sayin’… if you know the episode I mean, I’ve just given you a golden crumb to nibble on.

CapturFiles

CapturFiles_1

The multi-layered narrative surrounds a disturbed and alienated sixteen-year-old girl named Marguerite (Sondra Locke), who exists in a private world of dolls that she talks to and who in voice-over – talks back in the quietude and opulent isolation with her affluent mother (Mary Ure) and grandmother (Signe Hasso) at an exclusive Inn somewhere in Canada. Marguerite is not only held captive by her mother and grandmother but, to my impression, is seemingly a willing recluse who yearns for the love of the father she’s only known by the various books he sends her on art, flowers, etc.

CapturFiles_5

Katharine (Ure) and Grandmother (Hasso) read a letter from Michael.

CapturFiles_6

Grandma Julia-“I hardly think he’s coming again for you my dear she’s his daughter after all” Mother Katherine-“We’ve been so careful Mother” Julia-“A glimpse would perhaps satisfy him for another fifteen years” Katharine-“A glimpse would hardly satisfy Michael of Marguerite” Julia- “Would you stir his curiosity? And… Marguerite seeing Michael might tempt her to certain idolatry of the man.”

CapturFiles_35

Sandra Locke’s intense eyes.

Something is not right within the family dynamic. When Marguerite’s father Michael (Robert Shaw) finally arrives this particular languid summer to ask his wife for a divorce so he can marry Anne (Sally Kellerman), the vitriol comes out as Grandmare “turns the knife in” as Michael exclaims. Mary refuses to set him free unless he agrees to never see Marguerite ever again.

Once Michael sees his wisp of a daughter, whom he’s never known in the flesh, his peculiar gaze becomes transfixes on her. He finds her enchanting. He actually says so several times. Yet he is concerned about the way his wife and mother-in-law are holding the child prisoner. As he considers rescuing the child, the dynamic starts to invade Anne’s future life with Michael, and the brutal murders begin to ensue.

CapturFiles_15

Katharine see Michael again after many years.

CapturFiles_16

Michael returns to meet his daughter.

CapturFiles_17

CapturFiles_19

CapturFiles_22

reflection of fear dinner table

One of the central mysteries is whether Marguerite is being driven mad by her mother and grandmother, is she delusional, or if there truly is an Aaron – her mysterious unseen playmate? Either way, the concept is provocative and malefic. Always lensed in darkness, it adds to the creepiness of the matter at hand. “You keep me cooped up in here like one of the dead dolls in your trunk,”- whispers Aaron a mere shadow.

portrait of Aaron with his killer staff
The painting of the figure in black with a large staff looks similar to the life-size doll of Aaron that Marguerite keeps in her bedroom.

The local police come to investigate. Mitchell Ryan plays the cop who suspects the father, Michael, of the murders. The lovers, Michael and Anne (Kellerman), are to remain close to the crime scene, so they move into the estate as sort of an unspoken house arrest.

CapturFiles_40

Mitchell Ryan interviews Robert Shaw about the murders.

Sondra Locke manages to catch my interest with curiosity at her queer sort of whimsical prettiness, more odd than sensual. Here as childlike, gaunt,and pale as schoolhouse chalk, which works for the character of Marguerite. She carries on creepy Socratic dialogues with her decrepit dolls.

CapturFiles_4

Marguerite’s presence is both disturbing and sympathetic as she plays at being a fay prisoner, kept isolated by her grandmother and mother while exhibiting extraordinary intelligence and a primal burgeoning sexuality.

CapturFiles_23

CapturFiles_24

CapturFiles_25

CapturFiles_26

CapturFiles_27

CapturFiles_33

CapturFiles_36
The image of Aaron slowly arises in the frame in pure shadow- it’s a very powerfully eerie moment in the film.

Marguerite lives in a fantasy world, she’s brilliant, owns microscopes, a pond filled with amoebas, has full knowledge of horticulture, stamen and pistils and all that, has rooms filled with a myriad of creepy dolls in tatters and decay, a specie of cannibal fish which she finds quite natural in the natural order of things.

CapturFiles_3

Something that Michael’s girlfriend Anne will invoke when describing how Marguerite is trying to “devour” her father. Consume him, which he allows, as part of the odd liturgy of perverse underpinnings of the narrative. Incest, sexual repression, sexual mutilation, castration anxiety, oedipal lust, castrating females-misandry (women hating men) “Don’t ever let a man touch you, it’ll mean death.” Her mother tells Marguerite in a flashback through voice-over.

CapturFiles_59

Marguerite’s main confidant is a doll… or is he… named Aaron, a very belligerent spirit either way, who is quite possessive of Marguerite and seems to be destructive, antagonistic, and malevolent. Neither the mother nor grandmother believe he is anything more than a doll. Or perhaps they know more than they are willing to disclose to Michael when he comes to visit after 15 years. He wants to marry the lovely Anne, but Marguerite’s mother refuses to give him a divorce as a way of punishing him and using it as a weapon to keep him from seeing his daughter again.

During his visit, the odd relationship is shown, depicting father and daughter in a sexualized framework. It’s painful to watch as Michael doesn’t discourage Marguerite’s advances, not even in front of Anne.

CapturFiles

The cringy relationship between father and daughter.

Aaron begins to become more violent as the father and Anne intrude on the opulent, isolated netherworld these women seem to inhabit. Fraker, who was the director of photography on D.H Lawrence’s story The Fox 1967 directed by Mark Rydell, is really good at capturing the visual sense of place surrounding alienation, repression, and the immortal triangle. A quiet world, when all at once an intruder turns everything into chaos.

CapturFiles_37

Katharine is destroyed by Michael’s presence.

CapturFiles_38

The film is rather brutal and grotesque even within the kaleidoscopic colors and hazy shadows that both Fraker and Kovács manifest to murk and lurk and obscure what we see. This heightens the horror of the thing rather than impinges on it. The incandescent lighting and subdued colors of cinematography by the great László Kovács using filters and gels create a hazy, shadowy landscape that’s as enigmatic as the story.

The murders are savage, phallus-driven mutilations and speak of sexual repression and hatred toward women.

Marguerite is referred to as “enchanting” more than once. Her skin is translucent, and her Alice in Wonderland exterior purposefully dresses her up to look as if she’s falling through the rabbit hole at any minute. This might be a way to draw attention to the underlying turmoil of growing sexual awakening. Once her mother and grandmother are out of the way, she begins to wear more adult clothing. She also injects bottles of what is supposed to be insulin, but the labels have been removed from the bottles: Curiouser and curiouser.

At one point, she asks her father to give her the injection so that it won’t hurt as much. In retrospect, I think this is a pretty clear allusion to Marguerite’s desire to have her father penetrate her.

Sandra Locke’s performance is quite chilling, with her childlike, almost sociopathic lack of affect, it comes across as an eerie sexualized pubescent blonde droid, rather than a child who has been secreted away by the older women in her life, in a clandestine garden paradise with malevolent forces afoot.

Her voice is a frail, wispy spirit with no earthly substance, dressed in little girl finery, spouting factoids about sea life and flowers but bearing no resemblance to a real child of this world. Initially, her dolls have more breadth to them. But Marguerite begins to awaken by the presence of her father.

CapturFiles_50
Marguerite’s dolls represent her closed world; some even mimic the people in her sheltered life… Herself, Grandmare, and Father…

CapturFiles_51

CapturFiles_5

Marguerite’s mother and grandmother are cold and uncommunicative. There’s no sign of nurturing, although her mother calls her chéri.

The two women obviously hate men and have done a good job of keeping little Marguerite from coming in contact with anyone of the male species. Even the male fish get eaten by the stronger female of the species.

Sally Kellerman is the one character that buoys us to the normal ‘outside’ practical world. She sees all the subversive deeds and perversions that are rampant around the old estate but still refuses to walk away from the man she loves. She is the one stable witness to the madness as it unfolds.

CapturFiles_45

William Fraker and screenwriters Edward Hume and Lewis John Carlino (who also wrote the screenplay for The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea in ’76 interesting enough this too dealt with disturbed children with higher intelligence), allow the repulsive sexualized relationship between father and daughter to flourish til we’re as completely uncomfortable as Anne is.

In a very edgy scene where Marguerite, whose room is next to her father and Anne, masturbates while the couple is making love. Marguerite calls out “father’while she climaxes so that the couple can hear her cries. Anne finds this entire experience vile, though by now, she shouldn’t be surprised by the odd child’s behavior and finally almost leaves Michael yet still remains in this sick environment.

CapturFiles_47

CapturFiles_48

Anne and a day at the beach with Michael and Marguerite.

CapturFiles_49

The film is apparently heavily cut due to censorship in order to secure a ‘PG’ rating for its original U.S. theatrical release in the early ’70s. I’d love to see the unedited version someday.

The shocking twist ending was a bit muddled in terms of its visual revelation, but finding out that the film was badly modified due to censorship might explain some of the jagged continuity. I don’t mind the obfuscation of various key scenes as they add to the sense of mystery and concealment. The reveal at the end comes to full fruition like a gut punch.

CapturFiles_57

Sadly, Mary Ure died suddenly in her sleep in 1975 after an accidental overdose of pills and booze. The imposing and ever larger-than-life actor Robert Shaw suffered a massive heart attack in 1978 and so joined her in death.

This film is not for everyone, especially those that find psycho-sexual thrillers objectionable because their pathology is usually based on some kind of subversive wiring in the brain or dysfunctional or arrested development of the family structure. But if you’re like me, who just can’t devour enough obscure 70s dark and delectable lunacy, then try and catch this one night… bring your favorite doll. And if it is your cup of arsenic-laced tea, you might also try Secret Ceremony 1968 starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow, and Robert Mitchum. It also promises to disturb!

This has been a reflection of -Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl