I love this movie, I love this movie, I love it so much. It's one of the horror movies Stephen King wrote about in his book "Danse Macabre," which I read when I was younger and vowed to watch all the movies he mentioned. Yes, I'm a fangirl, I accept that. Anyway, I didn't get to see this movie until I was in college, and I really didn't expect to like it much. It's so weird, I mean apeshit insane at times, but I couldn't look away, and it impacted me so strongly that I just fell in love. It's been years since I saw it, though, so I wasn't sure if the movie really was that great or if it was just the first time I'd seen a movie like this so I remembered it as better than it was. Either way, it was high time I checked it out again.
This movie is about a father who's separated from his wife, and his young daughter has court ordered visits with her mother, who is institutionalized and under the care of a psychiatrist with contraversial methods. The man thinks his wife is abusing his daughter and wants to stop the visits because of the abuse, but the psychiatrist thinks this will be harmful for the mother. Meanwhile, we see that the psychiatrist's therapeutic methods are much stranger than we thought, and soon people around the man and his daughter start being horribly murdered. The man must find out what's going on and save his daughter before it's too late.
Samantha Eggar plays the mother, and she's just great. She's obviously nuts, but she's also charming and she has this vulnerability that almost makes you pity her and want to help her. It's not easy to pull that off, but she really does a fantastic job. Oliver Reed plays the psychiatrist, and he's also obviously disturbed and yet somehow alluring at the same time. It's obvious that his therapy is doing more harm than good, but he's mad with power, so he won't stop. They're a great pair.
Art Hindle plays the hapless father, and he's clearly perplexed and just wants to protect his daughter. He's also probably still in love with his wife, at least in some way, and he's also afraid of her, which makes sense, because she's nuts. She clearly has problems with rage, which made her abusive and terrifying when she was mad, but probably also passionate and loving at times, which can be very confusing. I've been in abusive situations like that, so I know what it's like, and it makes me feel especially bad for the little girl, who is probably very confused and mixing up love with fear in her young mind in a way that's definitely not healthy.
I haven't really said what the movie is about yet, and I want to do that without spoiling anything, which is hard to do. Basically, the psychiatrist trains the woman to project her rage outward, which in her damaged mind makes her create "children of rage," sending them out into the world to get violent revenge on those she blames for her situation. If that sounds weird, trust me, it's nothing compared to actually seeing it happen onscreen, her rage taking a physical form. It's creepy and bloody, and leads to one of the most disgusting scenes I've ever seen in a horror movie. I can stomach a lot, but this scene makes me want to vomit. Icky.
I'm glad to see this movie is just as viscerally shocking as I remember. The aforementioned nasty gore, plus the plot is so messed up that it really is terrifying. Watching what happens to a teacher in front of her classroom full of young students is really messed up, and that's even before the big stomach-turning scene I mentioned earlier. I'm happy to report that the movie is as good as I remember. I might even like it more now that I'm older and have a better grasp of family dynamics than I did when I first saw it. Overall, this is still one of my favorite horror movies, and I'm so glad i got to check it out again.
No comments:
Post a Comment