Die Screaming, Marianne
Watching a Pete Walker movie is sometimes a good film tutorial of how NOT to get the job done, for even when you have the proper tools, you can still manage to muck things up. Here, Walker gets one of his best leading ladies in Susan George (best remembered as Dustin Hoffmanās wayward wife in Straw Dogs) as Marianne, a beautiful, young gogo dancer who ran away from home as a child because she thought her family was trying to kill her over a Swiss account left to her by her mother that not only contains money but also blackmail documents against her ex-judge father. George certainly has that free-spirited, wide-eyed beauty to keep the viewer watching, and her acting isnāt so bad either. When, through a series of bizarre circumstances she winds up married to a kind-hearted Londoner (Barry Evans), her father decides to summon her back to try to reconcile (or does he?) . Even with this intriguing plot and lead actress, Walker manages to blow it all as usual with his trademark snailās pacing, not to mention his complete incompetence with the fundamentals of filmmaking (the cinematography goes from clear to hazy in the same scene, the editing appears to have been done in a butcherās shop). Also, the elements of the plot become muddled as charactersā attitudes and their motivations seem to change from scene to scene, and any semblance of a clear, concise storyline is lost. The other actors do try though: Christopher Sandford as Marianneās weaselly ex-beau who tries to set her up for money is someone most viewers will want to slap around; Judy Huxtable as her depraved half-sister (who practically throws herself at her father in an attempt to seduce him) is a lurid combination of sexy and skanky; and 1950s Oscar Nominee Leo Genn (with the gnarliest eyebrows on record) as the judge father is imposing and fearsome as we try to figure out his motives. The film is helped a bit by a ridiculously twisted theme song and some good scenery, but when you have a āmajorā British director who clearly needs to spend a few semesters in a reputable film school, naturally the results are gonna come out all skewed. In the end, another good idea that if reapplied by someone with a bit of talent and skill, may actually turn out to be a pretty good movieā¦
5/10