1977 - CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - on the big screen

Obviously re-released as a tie in to Spielberg's current fim Disclosure, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is almost 50 years old.  The film was made when Spielberg was in his early 30's and is an assured piece of work for a filmmaker at the beginning of his career.  Spielberg had finished shooting Jaws and was still something of an unknown quantity in Hollywood although people in the know recognized him as a potential major talent.

 

Spielberg was under enormous pressure during the making of the film.  The budget escalated from the initial estimates of 3 million dollars to 20 million dollars.  The studio Columbia Pictures was on very shaky financial ground and was constantly pressuring him to reduce the budget and wrap up the filming.  One of his producers had a significant drug problem and was apparently behaving erratically during the production.  But Spielberg stayed the course and remained true to his vision of the final film.

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind also benefited from some considerable behind the camera talent.  Vilmos Zsigmond was the very talented cinematographer Spielberg had worked with on his first feature The Sugerland Express.  John Williams composed the score.  Michael Kahn was the editor working with Spielberg for the first time and would go on to cut almost all of his other films.  Douglas Trumball who had worked with Stanley Kubrick was in charge of the pioneering special effects. 

 

 

I remember when the film was released the critical reception was for the most part good.  However some critics were looking for another shoot-em up Star Wars type of film but Spielberg was too much of a humanist to go down that road.  Spielberg even got one of France's greatest directors, Francois Truffaut to play the part of Claude Lacombe the French scientist in charge of the UFO project.  

 

 

In spite of some of some dated technology in the film (reel to reel tape recorders, paper maps, land line telephones), this film still plays very well and is certainly one of his best films.

Spielberg for the most part wrote the screenplay with the assistance of five other uncredited screenwriters.  The film exists in  three different running times, the 135 minute original release, the 132 minute special edition and the 137 minute director's cut.

1977 - HIGHWAY RACER, exciting Italian Poliziotteschi film.

In this Italian action film cars go flying through the air, crash into each other and generally create complete mayhem on the streets of Rome.

The who really cares plot involves a police officer out for revenge after his partner is killed in a car chase with some fast driving bad guys. Our cop hero Marco Palma soups up a Ferrari and the film is essentially one crazed car chase after another.

The film is particularly noted for a chase down of all places one of Rome's most famous landmarks "The Spanish Steps." One can only wonder how they got permission for this chase and where in the hell did they put all the tourists, since this Roman attraction is usually loaded with people.

The film lists in its credits Remi Julienne as the stunt coordinator,  Julienne had a long career staging car chases and some amazing stunts.  He was the go to guy when it came to car chase scenes for many years. Incredibly he worked until 2017 and ended up dying of Covid of all things after risking his life behind the wheel for years.

The film was written by Gino Capone, the running time is 105 minutes.

1977 - MR BILLION, the American film debut for Terence Hill

This should have been a slam dunk for director Jonathan Kaplan.  The Italian actor Terence Hill (aka Mario Girotti) made his American debut in this extremely lightweight action comedy.  The plot is very simple.  Hill has inherited millions of dollars and must travel to Los Angles from Italy to receive it in three days or else he forfeits it.  Into the picture comes crooked Jackie Gleason who is determined to cheat him out of his inheritance.  The film is a series of chases across the continental United States.

The cast is fairly decent.  Scene stealer Jackie Gleason does his amusing stuff and really he is about the only reason to sit through this film..  Valerie Perrine is the woman hired by Gleason to stop Hill but falls in love with him instead.  Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong and Dick Miller show up, had they been given decent material to work with this group would have been entertaining.

 

The problem is that the script is not very clever or funny. In Italy Terence Hill usually played a rather lovable con man type.  In Mr Billion the writers and producers have decided to make him the innocent abroad, a role that does not suit him. And let’s face it audiences probably missed seeing him with partner Bud Spencer (aka Carlo Pedersoli).   The film stumbles from one uninteresting chase scene to another and really none of these scenes are particularity exciting or funny.

This film was a critical and commercial flop.  It sent Terence Hill back to Italy where he continued to make the entertaining slap sticky kind of comedies with his partner Bud Spencer that audiences enjoyed seeing him in.

The film was written by Ken Friedman and Jonathan Kaplan, the running time is 89 minutes

1977 - EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, very strange sequel to The Exorcist

You have to give credit to the executives at Warner Brothers who green lite this sequel to The Exorcist. They could have easily went for the quick cash grab and knocked out a film that would have rehashed all of the violent and vomit scenes from the first film.  Warner Brothers sparred no expense with this film. A top notch director, an all star cast as it were, Ennio Morricone scored the film and the production was clearly an expensive one.

John Boorman the director was an interesting choice and signaled that the studio was looking for something a little more classy then some crappy horror movie.  The problem with Boorman was that while he was a great filmmaker he also had a tendency to go very "weird" on some of his films.  His previous film had been the very strange science fiction film Zardoz, a big warning sign if there ever was one.

Exorcist II:  The Heretic went for some high class casting.  Richard Burton played a priest investigating the first exorcism.  Burton was a fine actor but he brought a lot of baggage to his part with his somewhat hammy performance.  Louise Fletcher had won awards for her performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but in contrast to Burton she really underplayed her part to the point that she almost seemed nonexistent in the film.  Then there was the problem of Linda Blair.  Hired at age 14 to play Regan the now unpossessed child. Blair was 18 years old and was by necessity the linchpin of Exorcist II.  However her performance really seemed like amateur hour at times almost cringe worthy.  The filmed was going to rise or fall on her and unfortunately it fell. She was also stuck with some of the worst dialog in the film and there is a lot of bad dialog in this film.

Apparently during the filming John Boorman struggled with the story and never seemed to get a handle on it.  Was it going to be a horror film or a cerebral examination of good vs evil?  Clearly this was never resolved as the film jumps between impressively staged and photographed scenes and some of the laziest and most contrived plotting that would have put a 40's Universal horror movie to shame.

 

Exorcist II: The Heretic should probably be put in the interesting failure category of films. It's got good stuff in it but overall the film is a mess.  Maybe they should have stuck with the quick sequel cash grab approach.

The film was written by  William Goodhart but was extensively rewritten during filming by John Boorman.  The film exists in two versions, a theatrical cut and a shorter version that Boorman reedited in an attempt to salvage the really disastrous reviews the film received from the critics. I viewed the 117 minute version.

1977 - THE WAR IN SPACE, Toho's dumb but inoffensive space opera

Obviously made to get a piece of the Star Wars action, this Toho outer space spectacle borrows (steals?)  a lot from it's 1963 science fiction film Atragon about a super submarine which can fly and  fought an evil undersea kingdom called the "Mu."  In the film the super spaceship  looks a lot like the Atragon complete with the power drill head.  This ship is called the Gohten.

 As creatures from the planet Venus invade Earth and blow up lots of cities, which are lots of stock shots from other Toho films.  The Gohten goes into battle.  So we're off with some fairly decent model and animation effects as both sides blast away at each other.

 

As far as the personal stories go there is a love triangle which resolves itself when one of the group conveniently does the heroic self sacrifice thing.  In fact it's safe to say that a lot of people sacrifice themselves during this big intergalactic war. 

Yes there are a few things lifted from Star Wars particularly the plucky female lead who somehow loses her uniform and runs around in a tight short outfit.  There is also a Chewbacca like hairy creature who the crew of the Gohten have to do battle with.  The whole thing is derivative but kind of inoffensive. 

 

 Written by Shuichi Nagahara and Ryuzo Nakanishi.  The running time is 91 minutes relatively painless minutes.

1977 - SPECTRE, failed Gene Roddenberry pilot

This is a failed pilot from Gene Roddenbery the creator of Star Trek.  After the cancellation of Star Trek Roddenberry struggled with getting another TV series launched.  One of his ideas was to do a supernatural series with two protagonists taking on devils and demons and whatever each week.  This show was basically an update of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character with Robert Culp playing a paranormal investigator modeled on Holmes and Gig Young in the Dr. Watson part.

The TV pilot is generally diverting stuff mostly due to the cast and the director Clive Donner doing their best to move things along.  Anyway the plot is about the heir to a British family being menaced by some kind of demon who looks a lot like one of Star Trek's aliens aka kind of phony.  

 

There is an extended sequence with Gig Young being hit on by a group of sexy women which seems like a hold over from Roddenberry's film Pretty Maids All in a Row which probably could have been cut out of the script as it is not sexy or funny.

 Well anyway the film ends with one of those sacrifice the innocent victims on the alter of evil conventionally located under neath the British family's estate.  

 

I watched the European cut of this film which includes female nudity towards the end of the film.  Never ones to miss a buck, Hollywood studios would frequently release their TV films as actual films and insert some salacious stuff in them for the European audiences.

The running time is 98 minutes.

1977 - ROLLING THUNDER , one of the best films of the 1970's.

William Devane plays a soldier held as a prisoner during the Vietnam war.  He has to put it mildly an extreme case of PTSD.  Rolling Thunder is about his attempt along with another soldier played by Tommy Lee Jones to readjust to life in the United States after seven years of imprisonment by the North Vietnamese.  Since this was a film written by Paul Schrader the writer of Taxi Driver,  Obsession and The Yakuza, any viewer familiar with his work should have an idea how this film is going to end.

The film was directed by John Flynn an underrated filmmaker.  I suppose Flynn could be labeled a low budget exploitation director in some cases, but Rolling Thunder is as good as anything a Peckinpah or a Walter Hill could make.

 

William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones are a real creepy couple.  They are both practically emotionless and appear to have become addicted to violence and torture during their time as prisoners.

 The film's story details Devane's efforts to avenge the killing of his wife and son by a gang of Texas criminals.  The violence if tough and very brutal. Mention should be made of the actor Linda Haynes playing a waitress who becomes a groupie with a crush on Devane.  Haynes  portrays a woman who has been around the block a few times but still comes off as a highly intelligent character considering her circumstances.

 

 The film was written by Paul Schrader with a rewrite from Heywood Gould, the running time is 100 minutes.

1977 - ROLLERCOASTER, a thriller in the wonder of SENSURROUND

 A decent thriller that suffers from over length and was presented in the cinematic wonder of the late 1970's SENSURROUND, essentially big speakers rumbling at a low bass level.  The process was only used in about 4 films and then apparently abandoned.  Besides Sensurround the film is noted for being one of the few screenplays written by Richard Levinson and William S. Link creators of the Columbo TV series and primarily writers of high class television mysteries.  Rollercoaster was one of the few times they wrote for motion pictures.

The plot is the old mad bomber story with clean cut Timothy Bottoms playing the clever mad bomber who is running circles around the FBI and police as they attempt to catch him.  Into the mix comes safety inspector George Segal who is a lot sharper when it comes to figuring out the bomber's mind games than the police are.

  

The film is well directed by James Goldstone and Bottoms and Segal are very good in their roles.  However the problems with the film are it's length, it probably could have been about 10-15 minutes shorter (maybe one less rollercoaster ride) and the studio releasing it during the summer when it had to compete with films like Star Wars, Smokey and the Bandit and the latest James Bond film.  Jazzing the film up with Sensurround didn't really help the box office.

 

Still, if you are looking for a decent thriller Rollercoaster ain't bad.  The running time is 119 minutes.

1977 - SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER, the weakest of the Harryhausen Sinbad films.

Probably the most disappointing of the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films.  This time Sinbad is in search of a cure for a Baghdad prince who has been turned into a baboon by an evil sorceress.  This film is strictly a rehash of earlier and better Harryhausen films. Even the encounters with the monsters are "seen it all before" situations

The cast is generally a disappointment, Patrick Wayne and Taryn Power respectively the childern of John Wayne and Tyrone Power can't seem to generate much chemistry.  Jane Seymour playing Princess Farah somehow ended up in a supporting role but she certainly would have been a more interesting leading lady for Wayne. Also in the film is one time "Dr. Who," Patrick Troughton who at least livens the plot up.  Margaret Whiting as the evil Sorceress Zenobia is to put it kindly larger than life in her performance.

 

Ray Harryhausen's special effects don't seem all that special in this film.  The minotaur is a mixture of a guy in a gold suit and Harryhausen's animated figure but it's easy to tell where the live action actor and the animated figure switch between scenes.  The three ghouls that Sinbad battles are entirely to reminiscent of the skeltons from Jason and the Argonauts, and the fur on the tiger is all over the place a common challenge when animating creatures with hair.

 

The usually reliable screenwriter Beverly Cross put together a by the numbers story.  The running time is 113 minutes.

JESUS OF NAZARETH, TV miniseries is very long

The 3 year public life and preaching of Jesus as presented in this miniseries.  Jesus is a white guy with deep piercing blue eyes. The large cast is made up of a bunch of Hollywood and English movie stars.  The miniseries is very long. All of the above points were major criticisms of George Steven's The Greatest Story Ever Told.  However this film got good reviews, go figure.

Robert Powell plays Jesus with a lot of soft spoken sincerity but at times kind of comes off as a creepy cult leader.  He speaks in the usual biblical platitudes probably more a fault of everyone having to hear the same New Testament stories over and over in Sunday school

The director Franco Zeffirelli moves along from one biblical event to the next. We get the feeding of the crowd with the loafs and fishes, casting out the money changers from the temple, the last supper etc.

Jesus of Nazareth is not without of it's good points but it's a long slow crawl to get to the resurrection. Frankly this miniseries is pretty boring.

Besides Zeffirelli the writers included Anthony Burgess and Suso Cecchi d'Amico,  The film comes in at a whopping 374 minutes.

1977 - STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE

Preparing for the new Star Wars film and thought I would sit through the first three films. So called episode 4 still plays pretty well.  This was the enhanced version that George Lucas fooled around with adding more digital stuff to the film and some scenes that were previously cut.  Adding all this junk really didn't do anything for his film but it didn't really hurt it.  

The cast looks incredibly young and the idea to add Peter Cushing and especially Alec Guinness was an inspired casting choice.  These actors brought some gravitas to what could have been a very silly film.  The trend setting computerized special effects were also a big deal at the time.  Before this with the exception of 2001:  A Space Odyssey no science fiction film looked this good special effects wise.

It didn't escape many critics that Lucas "borrowed" from a lot of other films.  It can be a film buff's dream to do a spot the reference to other war movies particularly the final attack on the Death Star which is a mix of The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron.

Like I said the film still plays pretty well.  The film was written by George Lucas with uncredited help from Brian DePalma, Jay Cocks, Willard and Gloria Huyck.

121 minutes.

1977 - THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, mad scientist time

Yet another film based on the H.G. Welles novel.  The book is sort of the H.G. Welles version of Frankenstein.  This is the usual mad scientist playing with nature stuff and as expected things do not work out very well for Dr. Moreau the mad scientist and the people who happen to be unfortunate to be in his circle.

This version of The Island of Dr. Moreau is nothing special.  Everyone goes through the motions and you know the film is going to end with stuff blowing up at the end.

The director is Don Taylor a 50's actor who didn't have a particularly distinguished career as a film maker although he had a few interesting films on his list like The Final Countdown and the odd spaghetti western hybrid  Five Man Army.  The cast includes Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport and Barbara Carrera.  Richard Basehart is the "Sayer of the Law"  but sadly the submarine Seaview is nowhere in sight.  Frankly the plot of this film is basically and Irwin Allen TV episode anyway.

The monster makeup was co-designed by John Chambers who was a featured character in the film Argo and had created makeup effects for The Planet of the Apes along with his side career working for the CIA.

 

Written by Al Ramrus and John Herman Shaner, the running time is  99 minutes.

1977 - THE CHOIRBOYS, pretty bad film from Robert Aldrich

The Choirboys is another 1970's film from Robert Aldrich who struggled to find decent films towards the end of his career. 

A very badly made film.  The Choirboys should have been the perfect Aldrich film.  The film was a mixture of black comedy and drama the perfect material for Aldrich but man oh man what he did with it was next to nothing.

The acting is horrible, the photography from the reliable Joe Biroc is very flat and looks like a TV show.  The script is completely offensive in it's treatment of women and in particular gays.  Even as a gross out Animal House type of film The Choirboys completely fails.

Stunningly terrible film making.

119 minutes.

1977 - THE WHITE BUFFALO, yup JAWS as a western.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis was never one to miss and opportunity to rip off a successful movie particularly Jaws,  bought the book The White Buffalo and had the author Richard Sale turn it into a screenplay.  Past his prime director J. Lee Thompson was signed as director and Charles Bronson got the role as Wild Bill Hickok.

The story seems to be about Hickok confronting his demons which take the form of a white buffalo in his dreams.  Hickok teams up with legendary native American Crazy Horse when it turns out the white buffalo actually exists.  The white buffalo in fact reminds me of the "land shark" sketch that the early days of Saturday Night Live used to pull out for a few cheap laughs until they finally ran that joke into the ground.

The White Buffalo buffalo was built by Carlo Rimbaldi and ran on a track on a film set.  Rimbaldi had built the giant arms for De Laurentiis version of King Kong in the 1970's.  But probably Rimbaldi was most famous for constructing ET for Steven Spielberg and the weird succubus creature in Possession.  The cast was loaded with lots of old time Hollywood people.  Clint Walker, Stuart Whitman, Slim Pickens, Kim Novak and John Carradine.

The White Buffalo is watchable but not particularly good.  It's fun to see Bronson who was always a screen presence in a film but the final battle with the buffalo on the ORCA, the fake snowy set is a little silly.

97 minutes.

1977 - GRAND THEFT AUTO, Ron Howard's feature film directorial debut

The Orson Welles of lame stogy Hollywood films made his directorial debut with this redneck car chase comedy that is fun to watch because they wreck a lot of cars.

The film was produced by Roger Corman, the great exploiter of young talent.  Howard and his father Rance Howard wrote the story which pretty much consists of cars chasing each other.  Ron Howard found a part for his brother Clint Howard and loaded up some of the smaller parts with some of his Happy Days co-workers.

This film is not really anything special.  Howard directs everything in a two shot which is kind of understandable since he is stuck in a car for almost the entire film.  But considering that Howard had been a working actor his entire life he sure doesn't seem to know how to direct the rest of the cast.  Everyone is completely over the top except for Howard and his costar Nancy Morgan who are very bland.

Probably the best thing in the film are the car chase scenes which I doubt Howard directed since that is usually 2nd unit stuff.  However Grand Theft Auto made a lot of money for Roger Corman and helped Howard get better films since in Hollywood making money rules all.


1977

84 minutes.

1977 - DAMNATION ALLEY or cheesy science fiction film time

A quick 90 minutes for a silly end of the world science fiction film.  Damnation Alley has a low rent cast consisting of George Peppard, Jan Michael Vincent and Dominique Sanda.  Sanda was a French actor who had worked with Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci.  Seven years later she was stuck in crap like this working for studio hack Jack Smight, I wonder what happened to her career?

The real star of the film was the armored personnel carrier the "Landmaster."  It's kind of amazing this goofy thing even ran at all since it looks like it was made out of leftover corrugated boxes.  The plot of this film has the three actors driving down some corridor of the United States that doesn't have high levels of radiation in search of other people after the end of World War III.  They pick up a kid on their journey because in films like this there is always a kid that tags along.

The film definitely has a late 70's vibe to it with it's optical printer special effects of the sky on fire and the large fake scorpions that wander around the desert.  The film is also known for Peppard's famous line, "This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches." 

But perhaps I am being a little two hard on this film.  Damnation Alley does meet the 10 year old boy requirement when it comes to movie viewing.  It has a cool car gizmo, monsters and enough action to keep their interest.  The film does move along and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is, a "B" movie.

91 minutes.

1977 - MACARTHUR, the Cliff's notes version of the General's life

The producer Frank McCarthy who had filmed Patton for 20th Century Fox, took another shot at a famous egomaniac military guy,  General Douglas MacArthur.  The budget was a lot less than Patton and the finished film was a lot less as well.

The approach in this film was a greatest hits of MacArthur during World War II film.  You get the escape from the Philippines, the " I shall return" stuff, conflicts with President Truman, MacArthur's rule of post war Japan.  It's all interesting but it's a lot more interesting in a good MacArthur biography like William Manchester's American Caesar.

Gregory Peck plays MacArthur and that's kind of the problem, it's just good old Gregory Peck acting the same way he does in every film he was ever in, another solid unexciting performance.  MacArthur was a very flamboyant character.

The film was made at Universal Studios so you get the usual semi cheapskate production, lots of stock footage and matte paintings trying to make the film look like an expansive war epic.

130 minutes written by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.

1977 - AIRPORT '77, the 2nd in the Airport trilogy sequels.

This Airport film doesn't really reach the highs of the first zany sequel.  This time they sink the 747 in the Bermuda Triangle which leads to a spectacular rescue sequence courtesy of the United States Navy.

In Airport '77, our past his prime star is Jack Lemmon who actually brings a surprising amount of conviction to the part of heroic pilot Captain Don Gallagher.  Brenda Vaccaro is 2nd billed as his main squeeze.  James Stewart is the millionaire who has placed his substantial art collection on board the 747 which is hijacked by a gang of thieves bent on stealing the collection.

The cast is not really up to the goofy standards of the first film sequel but it does have some interesting actors in it.  Arlene Golonka, Tom Sullivan, Lee Grant, Gil Gerard, Pamela Bellwood, Juanita Moore, Robert Foxworth and George Kennedy again as Joe Patroni although his part is just a glorified cameo.

 

The director victim on this film is Jerry Jameson a television veteran of shows like Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man and Dallas.  Jameson gets the job done for what this film is, a rip off of a rip off.

Jerry Jameson would probably be an interesting guy to interview, he's really been around.  He was an editor on TV shows like I Spy, Gomer Pyle and That Girl. 

113 minutes, written by Michael Scheff and David Spector.

1977 - THREE WOMEN, Altman does Bergman

Three Women, is a pretentious male director with artistic ambitions attempting to make a film about women's psyches in the manner of Ingmar Bergman's Persona.

Robert Altman, supposedly based this film on a dream that he had which he then turned into a screenplay and it sure seems like it.  Altman appears to be making it up as he goes along using Persona as his guide.  Altman's best films are satires particularly on American life.  This is probably the best part in the film, poking fun at Shelly Duvall's shallow character Millie Lammoreaux.  A woman who's non stop prater about almost any subject makes her the shallowest of the shallow.
 
Where Altman belly flops is when he starts to get all surreal.  Again, obviously influenced by Bergman, he has the women's personalities merge and exchange with each other.  It sounds more interesting than it actually is.  Bergman can pull off something like this because he clearly knows where he wants to go in Persona.  He is examining aspects of a woman's personalty using a distancing technique in the filmmaking.

 Altman for all his arty shots of water and weird murals seems to be fumbling his way through his inconclusive ending where it appears the Three Women have exchanged roles as parent, sibling and some kind of earth mother type.

The acting is variable, Shelly Duvall is very good in the film.  Altman had recognized early in her career that she was an extremely talented performer and used her in many of his films.  Sissy Spacek, does her child/woman acting thing that she had previously used in Badlands and Carrie and doesn't really bring anything interesting to her part. Janice Rule is third billed in the film, but she has a  nothing part.

I saw Three Women the week after the first Star Wars had been released, there were about three other people in the theater.  Star Wars pretty much doomed this type of art film from occasionally being made in American studios into extinction.

124 minutes, written by Robert Altman.

1977 - AUDREY ROSE, sincere attempt to discuss reincarnation sucks as a film.

Older, experienced directors like Robert Wise seemed to have trouble finding suitable material for films in the 1970's.  Audrey Rose was obviously Robert Wise's attempt to do a high class version of The Exorcist without the vomit scenes.  The film fails completely mostly because of the poor casting choices that Wise made. 

The key role of Ivy Templeton, the reincarnation of a dead child named Audrey Rose is played by Susan Swift one of the most appalling child actors I can ever recall seeing.  Her personality is so grating that half the time you want to put a fist in her face whenever she breaks into her big phony Hollywood movie smile.  Marsha Mason plays her mother and she was never anyone's idea of a star. But thanks to her husband at the time Neil Simon, she managed to finagle her way into leading roles.  The actor John Beck is the father in the film and he's probably the only one who gives a decent performance.  This is one of the big problems with this film, these three never seem like a real family, they are just bunch of actors pretending to be a family.

Then there is the problem of Anthony Hopkins.  He is supposed to be playing the concerned father of Audrey Rose whose spirit has been reincarnated into the body of the little girl.  He comes off more as the spiritual father of Norman Bates with his ticks and mannerisms.  Hopkins acts more like a child molester than and anguished father.  The audience should feel sympathy for him, instead no one in their right mind would let their kid anywhere near this creep.

I'm not sure what Robert Wise was thinking when he put this cast together, but his casting sense really deserted him.  He had the same problem when he filmed Star with Julie Andrews and somehow got it into his head that Andrews was one of the sexiest women in Hollywood,  you saw how well that worked out.

113 minutes written by Frank De Felitta.