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This is a real oddity of a film, dealing with insanity and family madness in the vein of all those '60s shockers starring Bette Davis, such as WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?. This film features a barnstorming central performance from Susan Tyrrell as an absolute nutter of an aunt, who has sexual designs on her own nephew and who bumps off anyone who gets in the way. Tyrrell hams it up and screams and shouts with relish, shearing off her hair at one point to make her look even more wacky; this is an extreme physical performance and as such, Tyrrell is very disturbing in the part. You can't imagine anyone else playing it just like her. Is the actress mad too? You'd think so on the strength of her acting here.
The first hour of the plot is very slow and sedate with only a bloody knife murder to recommend it to horror fans (the subsequent blood-on-beast shots, apparently a pathological trigger for psychopaths, gained it a notorious 'video nasty' classification and a subsequent banning in the UK). Director William Asher was more at home with goofy '60s flicks like MUSCLE BEACH PARTY and he seems at home when dealing with small-town American life as he does here. However, the last twenty minutes of the film add a Grand Guignol punch to the proceedings as things become extremely over the top and the film turns into your typical slasher fare. People are stabbed, shot to pieces, impaled on pokers and have their limbs lopped off; there's also a pickled head in a jar which is always a fun plot ingredient for the horror film. Gore fans are sure to get their money's worth in this bloody climax which makes up for the slow-moving first hour.
Compared to Susan Tyrrell, the rest of the cast are a little dull; certainly the young male lead seems wooden in comparison. There is one sympathetic male character, a basketball coach played by Steve Eastin, but he's hardly in the movie. B-movie fans may spot Bo Svenson, star of the original WALKING TALL; here he's another enforcer-of-the-law, except this time in the shape of an extremely nasty and homophobic small-town detective. My money's on Svenson as the real villain of the film; at least Tyrrell has madness as an excuse. Film fans may also spot Bill Paxton in a very small role as a bully; hell, this was even before his bit part in THE TERMINATOR! As for the film, well, it certainly packs its punch and delivers a powerful climax; at least it achieves some moments of true horror, and the same can't be said for many an inferior imitator.
score 6/10
Leofwine_draca 23 October 2015
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3341102/ |
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1-4-2021 04:55:15