Mini Hitchcocks: Paranoiac

This one’s my favorite of the bunch. Always has been. It’s Gothic to the core, from the opening imagery of the cliffs along the coast of Dorset, England, to Janette Scott’s histrionics as she teeters on the brink of insanity… and incest.

But I get ahead of myself.

Paranoiac is the story of a wealthy family with more than one skeleton in the family closet. Eleanor Ashby is a fragile beauty, a walking Petri dish of mental disturbance. But if Eleanor is a psychosis ready to happen, brother Simon is the full bore psychotic, an alcoholic playboy who threatens his foes with handfuls of darts and drives his Jaguar roughshod over Aunt Harriet’s rose bushes. Simon is played by a remarkably young Oliver Reed (here aged 25) at a fever pitch of mincing, smirking, staggering, and wide eyed horror when he realizes his brother Tony has returned from “the watery grave.” You’d be shocked too, especially if you thought you’d killed the boy ten years ago and were only waiting for dear sister to be carted off to the booby-hatch so you can inherit the family millions. Well, it’s only a half a million, but who’s counting?

Lovely Janette Scott holds her own against Oliver Reed as Eleanor, especially when she realizes she’s fallen in love with Tony Ashby. Dashing Alex Davion is serviceable as “Tony” who, understandably, has the hots for Eleanor, but forgets he’s actually an imposter and allows that fatal kiss. “OMG! Unclean!” cries our heroine and makes a mad dash for the nearest pair of scissors. Cue melodramatic crescendos.

Confused? You should be. You need a flow chart to keep up with the relationships… and we’re only talking about three characters. That’s because Paranoiac brings us more script gymnastics by the prolific Jimmy Sangster, this time loosely adapting the 1949 novel, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. It’s all a bunch of good, dirty fun directed in widescreen black and white by the great cinematographer Freddie Francis. We get some great Gothic shots of Scott in wind-blown nightgown scampering barefoot among the terraced gardens, plenty of batty dialogue, and true to Hammer style, staccato bursts of violence, all wrapped up in a neat 80 minute package. 

This is a good one for a rainy Saturday afternoon, or late at night when you can't sleep. Or anytime you need a strong dose of Psychological Gothic, for that matter.

I've been drinking. And now I'm going to drink some more.

...speaking of Burnt Offerings (spoilers)

I hate this movie.

So why am I reviewing it? Because other people like it, and this blog is all about spreading the love for all things Gothic. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, so maybe you’re reading this and you decide to watch it tonight (US readers, it’s on Netflix) and find it’s the next best thing since sliced bread. Right on.

But I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. The story is lame and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Yeah, the Chauffeur is scary and all, but other than being a flashback from Ben Rolf’s childhood, what does it have to do with the Allardyce house, and Mother, and all that?

Speaking of Mother, wow she’s pretty scary too. I mean a house that rejuvenates itself on the pain and death of its inhabitants, that’s pretty freaky. Night Gallery freaky, not 115 minutes movie freaky. Which brings me to another gripe. This just isn’t a cinematic film, although it was. It’s a made for TV movie directed by one of the worst TV hacks ever, Dan Curtis. I know, I know. Dark Shadows, blah blah blah. Dark Shadows was a happy accident for which we’ll be forever grateful. But look at some of his other mid 70s output, The Norliss Tapes, and those dreadfully dry remakes of classics Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray et all. Do you know Dan Curtis actually claimed in a Fangoria interview that he could have made a better movie out of The Exorcist? Somebody pop that man’s bubble of a bloated ego.

Dan Curtis decided to shoot the movie through fog filters and with low camera angles. If any film students know what effect that was supposed to have on the viewer, please let me know. On the commentary track to the DVD, Curtis claims the novel was incomprensible, and that in adapting the book with William F. Nolan, they were able to make the story make more sense. Not much. I get the fact that it’s some sort of variation on the All Devouring Dark Mother Goddess, but couldn’t you have infused the screenplay with a few “real” scary scenes? Daddy trying to drown the kid in the pool just doesn’t make me squirm in my seat. I remember reading the book when I was fourteen (published in 1973) when publishers were still coasting on the diabolic fumes of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. This looks like an old ladies’ garden party by comparison.

And speaking of old ladies, even Bette Davis doesn’t have enough to do to liven up the proceedings. She does do a good death scene, though. It goes on for twenty some minutes, which must be some kind of record for eye bulging and bed writhing.

Davis, along with Oliver Reed and Karen Black, were a good draw to bring people out to the cinemas in 1976, but aside from the fact that Reed can do the most terrified looks of any adult male every committed to film (see his camera mugging in 1963’s Paranoiac) neither he nor Black are given anything to sink their teeth into. This sort of subtle Gothic thriller requires characters with deeper psychological scars beyond a recurring nightmare from their childhood. The Rolfs are a normal American family, which I am sure was Curtis’ point… but it’s boring.

So what’s good about this movie? The soundtrack. And for people of a certain age (i.e: younger than me who saw Burnt Offerings on TV at an impressionable age) the Chauffeur. And I have to admit, he has a creepy grin. And creepy is good.