'There's something bad in me daddy, I can feel it.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘I’ve seen you before.’
Bert I. Gordon, in his 99th year at the time of recording, is best known as king of the giant monster on the rampage films –
The amazing Colossal Man, Cyclops, King Dinosaur, please subscribe to check out our reviews –
but 1966’s Picture Mommy Dead is a very different affair.
‘Young ladies who are about to graduate from High School do not explode.’
Played by the director’s own daughter, Susan Shelley has spent 3 years in an convent for the mentally ill,
largely neglected by her father, as is pointed out by Sister Guilt trip.
‘Perhaps if you would have been able to visit her more often.’
who is also Sister Exposition.
‘You must remember that Susan went through a terrible ordeal, so terrible, that the memory of her experience was wiped from her fragile mind by shock.’
and Sister Sunshine.
‘There are times when the phantoms of the past tear at the child’s mind’
'Always vivid horrid nightmares.'
Susan was placed here after the death of her mother to which she was a witness
but of which she remembers nothing.
‘Heaven forbid she remembers.’
Also Sister Foreshadowing,
I was really disappointed she’s not in the rest of the film.
Susan’s Dad, played by Don Ameche is now here for her because he loves her,
and because he’s strap for cash.
‘I have to sell the paintings and the furniture, I need the money.'
and Mommy’s money is tied up in a legal arrangement, explained over long minutes by their drunk attorney.
‘Every penny of your inheritance is tied up in the trust fund’
Though it’s always worth seeing character actor Wendell Corey, I suppose.
‘You suppose?’
We also meet Dad’s new wife, and Susan’s old governess, Francene.
‘Is it true I made love to a bell boy at a hotel in Geneva’
and Tony, who tried to save Mom, Jessica, from the fire.
‘Good Lord Anthony’
Didn’t mean to draw attention to it, but seriously.
'Well, aren't you going to kiss your cousin?'
Tony shows Susan her Mom’s old room, restored to exactly how it was before the fire.
‘It was a blazing inferno and very much what hell must be like’
Sorry, I’m probably just making you feel bad.
I realise there’s a lot of backstory to keep track of but, it doesn’t really matter, all you need to know is that Francene want’s Jessica’s money.
‘You have a very wealthy daughter, don’t you’
Particularly one item of jewelry,
and there are questions over how Jessica died.
‘She was murdered, Daddy. And there is something in the house that will prove it’
This knowledge tells on Susan’s fragile mind,
even her toys seem to taunt her.
#Echos of laughs and the drunk attorney saying "killers should be punished," usual nightmare fuel.#
As do the paintings.
#Paintings scream "murder!"#
While the local wildlife is just out to get her,
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Bird.
That’s the set-up, and the big problem with the film is that the solution to the mystery is not steadily revealed via a series of haunting clues.
‘You intrigue me’
‘Do I’
It’s just dropped at the end.
‘Oh, I remember it’
So the mid-section is all marking time,
trying to seem as if there are clues by having everyone speak as if every sentence is loaded with meaning.
'I was just thinking, how can a toy die.'
Francene and Tony in particular can’t even make a cup of tea without it sounding like a devious plot.
‘Sugar’ ‘One lump or 2?’
‘I’ll start with one’
Frankly, this is where the film excels.
‘You don’t need any sugar, you’re saccharine sweet as it is’
There’s a few other things worth noting, Francene and Tony advertising their infidelity by having a post-coital stroll on the balcony
and the inexplicable casting of Zsa Zsa Gabor, as Jessica,
winning the John Wayne Gangis Kahn award for casting that completely changes the nature of a movie.
‘Darling don’t be such a boring man, I’m completely happy now’
I’m not convinced they gave her lines, I think they just let her talk.
‘I love all men’
But in the end you come back to the dialogue,
‘Your only sense of morality lies in the exquisite lack of any virtue whatsoever’
backed up by a well-timed thunderstorm.
‘If we talk will it chase away the dreams, the bad dreams’
#dramatic poeticlly timed thunder#
Elevating a below average thriller into very nearly a spoof.
‘The past is like a tiger, and no matter how much you paint it and prentend it is tame, one day it will turn.’
As characters manage to conduct entire conversations in portentous nonsense.
‘I’m merely stating fact, and fact is a stubborn truth’
‘Living alone has made a philosopher of you’
‘It makes living slightly more tolerable’
And it more or less holds your interest until we reach the ending
that was inevitable from the moment we learnt that Jessica had an identical dress to the one she burnt in.
‘Mother had two dresses, this one got torn so she had another one made’
Yeah, put it on, that doesn’t seem like tempting fate,
‘This is like that other night’
For the benefit of the slow in the audience.
‘This is just like that other night’
and this is just like that other line.
‘It’s just like that other night’
Very nearly funny enough to get away with being this bad,
but I still think Bert I Gordon should have stuck to giant animals.
‘Just like that other night’
#Did you ever see a hearse go by and think that you were going to die...#
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This was a departure for Bert I Gordon, what other directors abandoned their usual style for a film or two and did it work out for them?
Let us know in the comments below.
'Get out of here, all of you get out of this house.'