I really got a kick out of this movie. It is all atmosphere and strange organ music. People just speaking lines of everyday dialogue become as frightening as the dead man whose face appears time and time again. The central figure, Mary Henry, was apparently as spooky before she went in the water as she was after she walked onto the muddy riverbank. Her relationships with a series of townsfolk are as dull as can be (I love her landlady who tells her she can have as many baths as she wants)--and yet the sterility other encounters really adds to the suspense. The scene after she is fired for playing Satanic organ music, as she goes on a date with her sleazy fellow boarder who is hustling her from the get go, is a classic. She is so boring and yet he keeps on coming. She is attractive at times and a nut case at other. She makes no connections with human beings, but that's probably the point.
I enjoyed the place where the doctor kept his back to Mary so he could turn the chair around and transform into that same dead guy and frighten us. Whoa, I never expected that. It was really fun in a Pinteresque kind of way. On an obvious shoestring budget, shooting in Kansas, Herk Harvey (what a great name; director of the Academy Award winning "Fire Safety Is Your Problem"), plays with light, shadows bad makeup, overly quick cuts, but it does work. It's a scary movie and I would recommend it.
I enjoyed the place where the doctor kept his back to Mary so he could turn the chair around and transform into that same dead guy and frighten us. Whoa, I never expected that. It was really fun in a Pinteresque kind of way. On an obvious shoestring budget, shooting in Kansas, Herk Harvey (what a great name; director of the Academy Award winning "Fire Safety Is Your Problem"), plays with light, shadows bad makeup, overly quick cuts, but it does work. It's a scary movie and I would recommend it.