if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I was never a Sondra Locke fan. In fact, like many others, she will always be remembered as Clint Eastwood's long time fling. From what I gathered from a few movies I have seen her in (mainly Malpaso Productions) is that she was always this strange and odd actress that had a very off-putting demeanor and attitude. Pale, fragile and appearing like a waif in almost everything, in this mystery thriller, she is given the role she was born to play. She's a schizophrenic teenager who has been sheltered by her mother all her life. She hears voices and is always frantic about her imaginary relationships with her stuffed animals and dolls. We understand early on that this is an extremely disturbed individual. Her mother keeps a tight lid on her whereabouts, actions and her whole life which pretty much takes place on the household estate.In comes her estranged father and fiancée played by Robert Shaw and Sally Kellerman. He tries to mend a relationship he never had while asking the mother for a divorce in the most frank, blunt and unemotional way I have ever seen in a movie. I will not give away the climax for it's quite predictable, but in this case we want to see how it gets there. Save your time, because this is a slow paced mystery with lethargic acting, elliptic dialogue and a lead character who never seems to break out of that zombie like gaze while uttering poetic lines with that lilting voice. Sondra Locke is definitely unique, She can look beautiful, putrid, sickly, freakish and sometimes too nubile to be taken seriously. Robert Shaw gets caught between the jealousy of his fiancée and his daughter which limits his already stiff and anal performance.Reflections of Fear takes too long to tell us what happens what we already knew all along.

A REFLECTION OF FEAR (1973) ** Robert Shaw, Sally Kellerman, Mary Ure, Sondra Locke, Signe Hasso, Mitchell Ryan, Gordon Devol. Haunting yet problematic thriller based on Stanton Forbes' novel "Go To Thy Deathbed" about a young woman (Locke, who gives a tenderly troubled performance) who finds herself reuniting with her long-estranged father (Shaw wholeheartedly stalwart) while her eerie 'chats' with her 'friends' (read: dolls!) proves to have some truth to the eerie goings on including murder and incestuous underpinnings. While filmmaker William A. Fraker lays down the odd atmosphere with glossy cinematography by ace Laszlo Kovacs and Fred Myrow's pinpricking score to elicit some chills the final act feels compromised and frankly a cheat for what has been implied thru out in the adaptation by Edward Hume and Lewis John Carlino.

When I saw this film it was a on the double bill with Columbia's THE CREEPING FLESH, back in about 1973.A FLECTION OF FEAR is a lot like Paramount pictures sadly never released on tape, LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, and the Canadian picture: THE PYX. All three were made within a year or so of each other, and were very moody, dark and scary. The plot of A FEFLECTION OF FEAR is pretty convoluted. Who is the deranged killer, a boy grounds keeper, a emotionally disturbed girl, her father (Robert Shaw in a pre-jaws role)or a weird sinister doll. Or none of the above? It will keep you guessing till the unexpected climax. A lot of pretty frightening films were released in the early 70's and I was afraid to walk around in the dark alone for years after seeing this film. The reason I felt that this film was so scary was that it was a dark and misty looking film. filmed in low light and in many scenes,also with a possible gel filter on. Also the scenes in the house were very dark and creepy. This was especially true in the scenes of Sondra Locke's doll filled room. When the camera panned around the room showing (dark) close ups of all her dolls somewhat weird looking faces in various states of disrepair or use from age...brr. And most of all the one life-sized doll sitting silently in a rocking chair with a black cape and grim reaper like hood masking its features.....exactly as the killer is garbed. Is the doll alive? This is a horror film after all! Or is it really a person not a doll? THIS is the central mystery to the entire film.Since I saw This film at a pretty young age,I was for years frightened to walk downstairs in the dark in our house. I kept thinking I saw that weird deaths-head doll in every shadow, and we also had the same type of rocking chair as in the movie and sometimes as I was moving around in the dark the cat would get startled and leap from the rocking chair causing it to rock back and forth! I would go running back upstairs! All in all despite its cut released version this was a very creepy movie!

Weird! This is one of the most bizarre horror flicks I've ever seen. But weird can be good, and in this case, it's definitely good! The beautiful and sexy Sondra Locke is at her very best as the tormented teen. Mary Ure and Signe Hasso are appropriately sinister as Locke's overprotective mother and grandmother. Robert Shaw is the disturbed young girl's estranged father who returns home to announce he's going to marry lovely Sally Kellerman. Naturally, several strange and dastardly deeds occur before this event can take place. The film is by all means an effective suspense story(all right, so it borrowed here and there from PSYCHO), but does have its shortcomings. The movie was very severely cut to avoid an R rating and slide by with a PG. Bad editing makes it all too obvious where the missing footage should be. But, it's still a worthwhile thriller with genuine scares and great acting.