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 A "greedy husband" tries to drive his wife nuts by orchestrating unexplained
happenings. "This film is a gem from a time past whose frissons will continue
to creep stealthily into your subconscious." Um, maybe the meaning of that
sentence will someday "creep stealthily" into my subconscious. They conclude
by saying, [b]eware, they say, for you never know what can strike out from the
darkness of either your mind or the room you are in." 1958, 68 minutes, DVD
This has got to be one of the dinkiest films I've ever seen. Coming in at
pint-sized 68 minutes, almost nothing happens in the entire movie and it all
feels like a glamourized television episode of one of those "scary" anthology
shows from the 50s and 60s that wasn't as good as The Twilight Zone. With a cast of about five and one set, you get the idea that they weren't
exactly trying to reinvent the wheel with this movie. In fact, the only reason
the movie seems to exist is that somebody came up with the title and it sounded
neat because of the alliteration. Realizing what a little unremarkable movie
they had on their hands, the filmmakers turn to some flim-flam at the
beginning. A coffin opens up as the serious voice of the narrator drones on
about how horrifying the ending of the film we are about to see is and that
since they would feel bad if you died of fright during their movie they
promised to pay the funeral expenses of anyone who was scared to death at the
movie. I think a better deal was if they promised a wake-up call following the
film, but since it was so short, by the time I got all comfy under my quilt,
gotten my water, turned on the night light and peed three times, the darn thing
was over. Oh, and then they focus into the coffin and there's a piece of
paper saying "reserved for you" on it. You know, did this sort of hype ever
succeed in scaring anyone outside of a four year mongoloid?  The plot of this movie is straight out of Hitchcock! It is also straight out
of William Castle. It's your basic "husband tries to make crazy wife go insane
so he can get her money." The problems these movies always have is with both
the husband and wife. The husband is usually so obviously slimy that you
wonder why anyone in their right mind wouldn't knee him in the nads when they
first got groped by him at the honkytonk. The wife is usually such a floormat
and does such idiotic things, you can't really root for you. Half of what
happens she gets herself embroiled in. You just wish they'd lock him in jail
and her in the crazy house. This movie is no exception. It tells the fairy
tale life of newlyweds Eric (there's a name to trust, like Chad or something)
and Jenni. Eric is a dark haired guy who talks about how much he wants Jenni
to be happy, so you just know he's sizing up her neck for a noose. Jenni is a
dark haired chick who's claim to fame is her unsettling resemblance to Marilyn
Quayle. It was really unsettling when she started running around in her bra
and slip, but that's not until about half way through the movie (about thirty
minutes in). Eric is bringing his ugly bride back to his country estate. This
is the house that he and his first wife, oddly enough named Marilyn, resided
in. First wife, I say? Yep, he was one of those smarmy guys that goes through
wives like you or I might go through Mario Bava films. What happened to good
old Marilyn? Well it seems she was running down a path and it was raining and
I guess it was wet and she slipped and hit her head on the stone wall that
surrounds this pond full of lily pads on the grounds. She ended up dead in the
pond. And Eric ended up with this sweet crib he and Jenni are moving in. It
was an accident about as much as when my ex-girlfriend got herself preggers.  You know who is else is on the grounds? The director of the movie! Yep,
that's Alex Nicoli, the dude who is doing double duty, sucking it up from
behind and in front of the camera! His gardener character, Mickey, is
naturally the type who looks like he wet the bed, tortures animals and likes to
set fires. His hair is a little long and unkempt (and I'm not sure what color
it was supposed to be), he doesn't shave, but grows a beard about as well as Al
Gore, and most importantly he walks with a bad-guy limp! If you limp, you're
five times more likely to grow up and be a grave robber/crazed local. It's a
proven fact! Mickey was obsessed with Marilyn and was understandably upset when
Eric killed her, er, she tripped on a lily pad. In fact he's constantly
hanging out at the pool where her body ended up, sometimes even talking to her.
Eric keeps him around, because when strange and unexplained things like his
new wife being killed are happening, Mickey makes a nice little, handicapped
scapegoat. The only other two people in this movie are the Rev. and Mrs. Snow.
They show up and Mickey talks about why Jenni is nutso and will probably kill
herself, even though she has lots of money. You see, Jenni is "delicate" as
they say in the crazy biz. Her parents were killed when she was younger.
Their boat overturned and they drowned while Jenni sat on the shore, gorging on
Moon Pies or something. So now, she's kind skittish about water like the kind
of water you might find in a pool full of lily pads where a first wife might've
slept with da fishes. Eric also take this opportunity to tell them that he is
going to make her well by making her happy and that's his main concern. Dude,
the rate at which you say stuff like that is inversely proportional to how
much you really
mean it. So Jenni meets Mickey and Mickey is a bit standoffish since he loves
Rebecca, oops, I mean Marilyn (Oh and by the way, the estate they use in this
movie is certainly no Mandalay! I should've just watched Rebecca and set my Keystone on this disc).
The next couple of nights are devoted to Eric trying to drive Jenni crazy.
She helps things out, by hearing things and seeing things and on the first
night she's up claiming she's hearing a person scream. Eric says, "don't sweat
it babe, that's just the peacocks talking." Didn't I mention that besides a
lily pad pond and a scuzzy gardener, that the estate has a couple of peacocks
on it? How stupid (but they really sound strange when they squawk!). Another
night Eric goes out to talk to his lawyer or something (just making out your
will for you baby, that's all) so Jenni settles in for the night.
Inexplicably, we have to watch her strip down to her bra and slip. Normally, I
wouldn't object to that particular plot development, but in this case, its akin
to seeing your grandma in her skivvies. I don't know what was going through
Alex Nicoli's mind. Actually, I probably do, and it just ain't right, not even
here in Missouri! Now, mercifully she gets into her nightgown (at least most
of her does) and she lays down to read the latest issue of Haunted Homes and Gardens when all of a sudden she hears something. She goes and checks it out and then
there's problems. There's a skull in the closet and blood on her hands. At
some point a portrait of Marilyn taunts her as well. She takes the skull and
chucks it
out the window. In the morning, Eric is pooh-poohing everything that went on
and has her burn the picture to prove it ain't no big thing. She sees a skull
in the ashes and Eric tells her there's nothing there, so she faints. Once
she's out, Eric picks the skull up and hides it in the pond. What a shocker!
It was Eric all along! I can't believe it's not the retarded gardener!
Speaking of special ed groundskeepers, Mickey has been watching this and
retrieves the skull from its hiding place. Later Eric goes to find it and
freaks out when he can't. The Rev. and his wife make an appearance and Eric
tells the Rev that he's taking Jenni away tonight, but also that she might kill
herself, so don't be surprised if another one of my wives dies, just thought
you should know. Later that night, Eric freaks her out again with some more
tricks and he hides around a corner until she comes careening by and he grabs
her and chokes her out. Then he gets the noose ready to hang her when all of
sudden, company shows up! See, the Rev and his wife have been tipped off by
Mickey I guess and so they're coming to rescue Jenni. Now it's time for some
poetic justice, some ironic type junk, some what's good for the goose is good
for the gander, a little taste of his own medicine, that type of thing.  Eric answers the door, prepared to tell those Jehovah's Witnesses that he's a
Unitarian, when he sees it's not a pair of religious zealots in cheap suits at
all, but the ghost of his dead wife! What are you doing here, he wonders and
throws something at her, causing her to collapse (wuss ghost!). The next thing
we know, he's being harassed by her skull! Her screaming skull! Okay, I don't
recall if it was really screaming, but it was terrifying to watch him run down
the stairs while the skull rolls down after him! I mean, a grown man running
away from a plastic skull someone tossed down the stairs? Scare-eee! Well,
that ain't the worst of it, because somehow this skull jumps up and starts
chomping him on the neck! So you get to see him struggle with it and what do
you know, but they end up in the pond! He thrashes around a bit trying to make
it look convincing (no dice) then finally croaks. Everyone else decides that
maybe the first wife wasn't accidentally dead and that Eric was trying to drive
Jenni crazy for her money. If you really insist on watching these domestic
terror movies, you'd be better off to check out William Castle's The Night
Walker. While not on the level of Hitchcock's suspense thrillers, Castle does
attempt to make a full length film with a little imagination and technique.
Plus
it's got Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck instead of Eric and Jenni (real
names unimportant). With the movie being so short, you don't a get chance to
understand anything about anyone. They just summed up in 45 seconds of
exposition ("her parents died when she was younger, she's delicate" "he was
after Jenni's money"). What is up with Eric? Why do you need the money? Why
can't you have it while you're married to her? Why'd you get rid of the first
wife? If we could've explored his motivations a little, the might have helped.
And what exactly is wrong with Jenni other than she is a spaz? As portrayed
in the movie, she was high-strung all the time and indiscriminately. Why would
things going bump in the night make her all scared just because her parents
drowned? The shortness of the movie also hurts it's ability to build up the
scares or at least the torment that Eric inflicts on Jenni. Here he just pulls
a couple of haunted house gags on her over a weekend and that's that. That
wouldn't have made a eight year old sissy wince. What kind of plan was this
anyway? Did he think he could just leave skulls laying around the house and
eventually she go batty? A completely inconsequential film that has the
substance of the large gulps of air I was constantly taking as I watched in an
effort to stay awake. I beginning to think that director Alex Nicoli cast
himself as the gardener because he couldn't convince a fifth person on the
planet to sign onto the project after he signed up the losers that played Eric,
Jenni, and the Snows.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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