Dreadfully Boring

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Richard Carlson always looked worried at the best of times, and he sure has plenty to worry about here. In the hands of a really creative director some of the shock scenes in this film - as when Carlson's dead mistress gatecrashes his wedding - could have made this a classic. Instead it has Bert I. Gordon (who turns 95 in a couple of weeks) - the very poor man's William Castle - whose direction ironically manages to be both over-emphatic (exacerbated by an annoyingly noisy jazz score lifted from Castle's 'House on Haunted Hill') while failing to generate real atmosphere. But it holds your attention for the duration and you settle down to enjoy the ride in pleasurable anticipation of the next shock effect that you know is just round the corner.Gordon (like Castle) obviously saw and was impressed by Clouzot's 'Les Diaboliques', and probably knows his Poe, since the plot in places strongly recalls the 'The Tell-Tale Heart', while the basic premise of a jealous dead lover who won't lie down anticipates Roger Corman's 'The Tomb of Ligeia' (1964). (The presence of Joseph Turkel - now 90 years old - similarly evokes memories of his spine-chilling presence twenty years later as Lloyd the bartender in Kubrick's 'The Shining'.) As the discarded Vi, Juli Reding is already scary enough when still alive, as a ghost she's in her element arranging nasty surprises like cattily dumping wet seaweed on her rival's wedding dress.

As most fans know, producer/director Bert I. Gordon didn't receive the pet nickname "Mr. Big" based on his acronym alone. From 1955 to '77, Gordon came out with a series of beloved films dealing with overgrown insects, reptiles, humans and other assorted nasties: "King Dinosaur" ('55); "Beginning of the End," "The Cyclops" and "The Amazing Colossal Man" ('57); "Attack of the Puppet People" (in which Mr. Big reversed directions and went small), "War of the Colossal Beast" and "Earth vs. the Spider" ('58); "Village of the Giants" ('65); "Food of the Gods" ('76); and Joan Collins' least favorite film of all those that she appeared in, "Empire of the Ants" ('77). In 1960, however, Gordon took a break from his outsized monstrosities and presented his fans with a decidedly different type of tale: a supernatural ghost story! The picture in question, "Tormented," was released on September 22 of that year and was one that Mr. Big not only directed, but also produced and co-wrote. And thanks to the DVD revolution, this near-forgotten piece of work may soon be getting some recognition for the entertaining (if minor) journey into the uncanny that it is.In the film, the viewer makes the acquaintance of a fairly well-known jazz pianist named Tom Stewart, well played by Richard Carlson. (A personal foible of this viewer is that I always have a hard time differentiating between Carlson and fellow actor Hugh Marlowe. Perhaps it is their similarity in looks and on-screen personae. Whatever the case, I have to keep reminding myself that Marlowe featured in "All About Eve" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still"; Carlson in "The Magnetic Monster," "It Came From Outer Space," "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "Valley of Gwangi.") When we first encounter him, Stewart is having a heated argument with his ex-girlfriend, Vi Mason (saucily played by Juli Reding), about just whether or not she IS his ex or not. Stewart does his best to explain that he doesn't love her anymore and that he has a fiancée, Meg (played by an actress with the very strange handle of Lugene Sanders), to whom he is completely devoted. During their contretemps, Vi leans against the railing of the lighthouse where they stand; the railing collapses, and Tom does nothing to rescue her. Vi falls to her doom in the rocks and water below, and Tom feels himself guilt-free, and well rid of the clingy chanteuse. But as events in the coming days show, though Vi might well be dead, her angry ghost is very much "alive" and well, and hell-bent on doing everything in her power to wreck Tom's upcoming wedding and claim the pianist as her own. And Tom's plight is made even more complicated when the tug skipper who had ferried Vi over to the island (although a certain Wiki site avers that the film transpires on Cape Cod, an island off the coast of California is more likely, especially in light of the fact that Meg's folks have a house in Bel Air) gets wind of what happened and demands "five thou" for his silence, and when Tom's future sister-in-law, 9-year-old Sandy (the adorable child actress Susan Gordon, who had appeared in "Attack of the Puppet People" and would appear in father Gordon's "Picture Mommy Dead" in '66), also begins to grow troublesome....So, as a ghost story, does "Tormented" provide the requisite chills? Well, yes, there ARE any number of eerie scenes: Vi's drowned body turning into a mass of seaweed; Vi's footprints mysteriously appearing in the sand; the song "Tormented," which Vi once recorded, playing itself on Tom's phonograph; the ghostly hand of Vi appearing and later stealing Meg's wedding ring; Vi's perfume wafting through Meg's parents' house; another mess of seaweed befouling Meg's wedding gown; and Vi's face appearing in a photo of the betrothed couple. The film, compact as it is at a mere 75 minutes, yet features a number of memorable sequences, including one in which Vi's floating head appears to Tom, taunting him with the words "Tom Stewart killed me, Tom Stewart killed me," and the one in which Vi's ghost busts into the wedding ceremony of Tom and Meg, causing all the flowers to wilt and culminating in a bloodcurdling scream from the terrified bride. (Not for nothing did the trailer for the film urge the viewer to "Attend the Wedding of the Wicked...and the Weird!") And director Gordon even gives us one truly memorable final shot, with Vi's ringed hand resting on Tom's chest. All told, a wholly satisfying little ghost picture, which leaves the viewer with only one nagging question: Why has Tom chosen the comparatively mousy Meg over sexpot Vi, the latter being not only a better-looking woman, but a more talented (as evidenced by her singing) and passionate one as well? Guess there's no explaining taste! And, oh...just one word on the DVD itself. The one that I recently saw came from those notorious underachievers at Alpha Video, but happily, the print in question here features only minimal damage, and is, for the most part, sharp and clear enough for comfortable watching. All the better for discovering this small but likable picture from good ol' Mr. Big....

After his inactivity caused his mistress' death, a jazz pianist about to be married finds the dead woman's ghost haunting him wherever he goes and forcing him to resort to increasingly violent manners to keep his actions a secret.This was a pretty disappointing and really disjointed effort. One of the biggest issues present in the film is the rather banal efforts used in the haunting scenes that, while effective in continuing a present storyline, fail to really provide anything worth getting scared over. The scares are a never-ending series of floating voices only he can hear, disappearing appendages only he can see and whenever he goes to apprehend it finds it's not what he went after but something else entirely, and all the while this generates some lame scenes due to their repeating nature. As well, the lack of danger to the others around him makes it all pretty clear this might be simply a guilty conscience rather than a traditional ghost haunting, and the film does remarkably well at incorporating elements to make it seem that's the case here but that doesn't make for an exciting effort. The low-key nature of the material and middling pace don't help much either, and overall drag this one down enough to overcome the decent special effects to showcase the apparition which marks the film's only other bright spot.Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

If you're looking for first-class or even second-class acting, this is not your movie. However, if you're familiar with and like other Allied Artists B-movie horror entries circa 1960, this one fits the bill. It's somewhat like a Beatnik version of the tell-tale heart.Tom is a rising jazz pianist about to marry a girl from a prominent family. Unfortunately his ex-lover, buxom nightclub singer Vi, refuses to let go and threatens to show Tom's fianceé the letters he wrote her. Tom is afraid of exposure - I suppose his sheltered fiancé would be shocked! shocked I say! to find out that a 35 year old man is not a virgin! Vi leans against the railing of the old lighthouse they are arguing in and the railing breaks. Tom has a few seconds to save her as she clings to the railing screaming for help. However Tom was against saving her before he was for it and he lets her drop to her death. Now technically he has done nothing wrong - she did fall on her own - and if he went to the police now and said she fell he might get away with it. But he just walks away, leaves the lighthouse, leaves the body in the sea, and figures nobody will ever know... but his conscience knows.So suddenly what should be a happy time in his life is filled with visions of his dead lover. Sometimes it's her hand trying on his fiancée's engagement ring, sometimes it's her head rebuking him, sometimes it's her whole body in a ghostly apparition popping up in engagement party photographs. However, only he sees these things - for awhile. As someone else said, at first you can somewhat sympathize with Tom, but as Vi's "head" predicts, he goes from bad to worse to cover up his crime, until at the end he is contemplating the most horrific act imaginable.The acting here, except for Richard Carlson as Tom and Juli Redding as Vi, is so wooden you could build a bonfire out of the performances, but it all just fits in so well to the spartan Allied Artists early 60's horror atmosphere that I didn't mind. Even Ms. Redding has some weird Marilyn Monroe vibe going, but it's all part of the fun. The really weird part is the large section of the film dedicated to Tom's future sister-in-law - all of nine - doing her prepubescent best to win Tom away from her sister.If you like films like "The Hypnotic Eye" and "Macabre" give this one a try, just realize it's much more camp and cheese than horror.