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Good film could have been great (spoiler)


This is a well-acted, well-directed thriller with tremendous atmosphere but a plot that falls apart at the end. I gave it 7/10 stars based on my interest, and I'm surprised to see it rated so low.

For those who have seen it, can you explain why the father is alive at the end? I had suspected the suitor who wrote the letter to the girl retrieved him from the casket, assuming he was even in it to begin with. Of course, the son may have rescued the father much earlier. And whose body falls out of the ceiling?

I also suspect the mother and daughter "weren't all there" from years of physical and psychological abuse, so maybe they didn't actually do what they thought they did, and a lot of their "flashbacks" may have been hallucinations.

Any thoughts?

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I liked this film and thought it was very well-done too (except for the low production values on the DVD copy I watched; the sound was off and the picture quality rather dark and murky, but then, that was sort of atmospheric).

There are many things unexplained. The body that falls down from the ceiling appears to have a mask on it, making it look like the father. We see this mask earlier when the father is putting something away in a storage closet. Could it be that the wife and daughter have tried and failed in the past to kill him, so he now anticipates it from them, thwarts them, and returns to make their life a still-living hell? My feeling was that Rupert was in on things with the father and conspired to drive mom and sister Jane insane. Remember the phone call from Rupert to home from the office on the Monday following the supposed killing? He seemed blithely unconcerned with dad's whereabouts but stridently ordered mom and sis to go to the country house. Where of course they found....nothing, where they should have found dad in bed, dead. Oh, but then they found the crate...

It could also be that mom and sister HAVE gone batty from so many years of repeated abuse and torment that they imagined the entire thing. Although, I tend to think they actually did think they killed him, and the father was thwarting them as I indicated above. At the end, too, at the breakfast table, Jane is holding a bandage to her face and mom is more cataonic and mute than ever before.

I think the ending was purposely ambiguous. One of those things you fill in your own answer to.

Am I anywhere near the imaginary cliff?

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Thanks very much for your thoughts, LadyJaneGrey!

I had noticed the father with the mask earlier, but I didn't notice that the body that falls out of the ceiling had that mask on. That would appear to explain a lot – but what, I'm not so sure.

It does appear that the son was in on it with the father, but what "it" was, I'm also not so sure. The phone call from Rupert does seem to indicate some plotting on his point.

I don't mind the fact that not everything is explained in films – in fact, usually I prefer it. In the case of this film, though, I wonder if those loose ends are intentional or the result of, say, missing footage or an incomplete script. Regardless, the atmosphere alone was enough for this film to make a lasting impression on me.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

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I don't mind the fact that not everything is explained in films – in fact, usually I prefer it. In the case of this film, though, I wonder if those loose ends are intentional or the result of, say, missing footage or an incomplete script. Regardless, the atmosphere alone was enough for this film to make a lasting impression on me.


^^This pretty much sums up my thoughts on this interesting and strange film.

I thought it was really great up to the point where the mother/daughter go back to the country cottage and find his "corpse" in the box.. at that point it all was just too vague and odd to be scary or enjoyable.

Regardless though, I still really liked it overall. I thought the performance by the gals playing the mother and daughter were really good.

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Thanks for your thoughts. This is very much a mood piece, and a very effective one at that, so I don't think the plot needs to explain everything. Another moody thriller that leaves the interpretation to the viewer is "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," also from 1971.

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Another moody thriller that leaves the interpretation to the viewer is "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," also from 1971.


Love this one!

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You have excellent taste!

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[deleted]

No disrespect, but I thought the ending was similar to an ending of a Twilight Zone episode, which was ususally shocking and memorable.:>)

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I probably should watch it again before opening my mouth and showing my ignorance....

I liked it, being an anglophilic American, but also was disappointed by a number of problems.

The DVD copy (which was a great bargain, being one of those "50 movie" sets) was so hazy that several things like letters, labels and pill bottles, which may have been intended to be readable weren't, making the plot more inscrutable.

At least one apparent plot device went unused. The early scene (on the poster it appears) that showed the daughter filling an atomizer with some smoking liquid went nowhere; she just put it in a drawer and I never saw it again. Perhaps I missed it. But it seems to be either bad editing, or a pretty lame "red herring."

She was supposed to be 16?? Age of consent in Britain I think. Not very buyable. Even if I could believe she was that young, would the mother let a 16 year old handle so much of the talking/alibi etc.?

At the end I just said, "That's it? You have no explanation??" But I'm somewhat satisfied by the explanations I've seen here. He sure seemed dead in the NAILED crate they found him in. Which was then dumped, rather foolishly it seemed, down a steep embankment into water (a wooden crate with a body aint likely to just sink...) I'd believe it was a dummy hanging down; I thought it was just a rather poor special effect dead body.

I'd probably have been easier on it if the girl wasn't a bit...plain looking to my taste. Give me Susan George or a Hammer girl. Michael Gough needed balancing by someone with a bit more presence.

P.S. Just watched another movie from the same 50 movie "Pure Terror" compilation called "Satan's Slave" (AKA "Evil Heritage") made 6 years later also starring Michael Gough and with a somewhat similar plot. I thought it was a much better film, though IMDB's rating puts it slightly lower than this one. The picture quality is far better, the two female leads are much better looking, and the plot is actually coherent with a pretty good twist ending. Check it out if you liked this movie.

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I think the scene "that showed the daughter filling an atomizer with some smoking liquid" , a scene I would describe as filling a perfume bottle with acid, was to demonstrate early on how disturbed the daughter in particular was. They made the same point later with the mother and her anti-psychotic medication.

Whether they were disturbed because of the abuse, or were abused because they were disturbed was never established, but on thing is for certain... they were both very much disturbed.

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My thoughts are that the father survived the murder attempt. He was only unconscious when the ladies thought he was dead. When he awoke, he was mad and wanted to get even, so he messed with them, and staged the whole thing on his own, all to drive them nuts. Rupert or the daughter's stalker/neighbor might have been involved, but we see no "evidence" of this. The neighbor from the cabin might have been involved also, but I sense it was 100% the father's doing. Unlike some of you, I think it is very weak and I HATE movies where they leave things for you to interpret. We got into a pretty cool little mystery, well acted and suspenseful. Let's face it...we all knew the dad would end up being alive, so the only question was: how did he accomplish everything? That is the one question we were all dying to find out, but unfortunately, there was no answer.

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In a good film like this one, every scene has meaning. Earlier in the movie, there was a scene where the father came upon the bottle which contained the liquid which was to be used to poison him later. At the time he discovered the bottle, the scene had little meaning, but in retrospect after having seen the entire film, that scene provided a large part of the explanation that you're saying was omitted. Ergo, he had access to the poison prior to its administration.

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This is a brilliant and wicked little psychological beat down and is quite underrated on here. Somewhat due to the fact many are seeing terrible dvd versions.

I enjoy movies that have multiple perspectives that can be used to connect to it. Some see the mother and daughter as victims of an abusive man. It is legitimate and it works as physical and psychological abuse reaching a breaking point.
But there are other ways of looking at much of what takes place.
I happen to view both women as crazy bitches. The wife could drive any man to permanent seething rage.
The daughter is another Wednesday Addams, only not as well adjusted.
Very little that takes place is blatantly unreasonable on the part of Walter. His personality is rather cold and bitter but mostly it is in reaction to things that actually are kind of annoying. You see some of his worst actions as flashbacks the mother and daughter have which may also be delusions.
During the descent to madness, the viewer is brought along for the ride for the mental gymnastics in the ending. Maybe there isn't a sane character in the entire film?

The pacing isn't terribly quick and there isn't a huge amount of action and some will find it pedestrian, but it is far more effective than many other films which tried hard to achieve the same psychological, moral and narrative ambiguity.

.

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I saw this movie many years ago. The commercial interruptions made the movie better paced. I saw a few VHS copies (Paragon, MGM Home video) and boy was the pacing slow. This movie would have better as a one hour episode of a suspense anthology series. The movie seemed padded beyond belief. At ninety minutes, this movie was way too slow, and of course the confusing (how did that happen?) ending didn't help matters.
I recently watched Netflix streaming version of this film.

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