80's American Horror Part Eighty-Eight

DELUSION

(1980)

Dir - Alan Beattie

Overall: MEH

The first of two full-length from director Alan Beattie, Delusion, (The House Where Death Lives), is a low key, slasher-adjacent outing that is unremarkable despite its restrained style.  Beattie co-wrote the screenplay with Jack Viertel, the latter's only such credited writing effort.  Their inexperience is forgivable given the bog-standard premise of a woman who goes to work as a nurse in a creepy old house where the concerning behavior of everyone there naturally proves to be a red herring for the true, least expected culprit.  This formula is so widely used and easily recognized that it actually makes the twist predictable since anyone familiar with the framework will put two and two together before too long.  That said, Beattie keeps the camp and humor at bay, letting Patricia Pearcy's protagonist narrate the proceedings in a toned-downed manner.  Unfortunately, said proceedings drag on at an unacceptable rate and even some occasional nudity, mild violence, and a bed-ridden Joseph Cotten collecting a paycheck cannot stop the boredom when frequent deaths are considered mere accidents, the camera lingers on poorly-lit interiors, and nothing seems to have any sense of urgency to it.

 

CRY FOR THE STRANGERS

(1982)

Dir - Peter Medak

Overall: MEH

A typically forgettable, overly talky television movie for the time period, Cry for the Strangers debuted on CBS in February of 1982 and is an adaptation of John Saul's novel of the same name.  Director Peter Medak bounced between theatrical work and TV productions throughout his career, joined here by soap opera mainstay Peter Duffy, Ferris Bueller's mom Cindy Pickett, and Karate Kid bad guy Martin Kove in a minor role.  Plagued by a persistent musical score and lazy melodrama, the horror elements are underplayed sans some thunderstorms, (which serve a significant narrative purpose), and cloudy shots of what are supposed to be Native American spectres that have a particular fondness for burring people alive in the shallow sand before the tide comes in.  Even these macabre, supernatural elements, (coupled with a kind-of-possessed kid), fail to come off as properly sinister, let alone fetching for any audience member that is craving genre-worthy chills.  Medak seems to be doing his best with the material, but whoever's idea it was to let the busy soundtrack manipulate every scene while keeping the action to a bare minimum is to blame for this fading into obscurity as mere filler to play in the background for housewives who are folding laundry while half paying attention to it.

 

WHITE OF THE EYE

(1987)

Dir - Donald Cammell

Overall: MEH

 

Though it is technically a British production, Donald Cammell's penultimate full-length White of the Eye was shot and set in Arizona with an exclusively American cast.  Allegedly, none other than Cammel's old buddy Marlon Brando convinced the MPAA to give it an R rating after a proposed X, which unfortunately is a more interesting side note than anything in the actual movie.  A solid enough staring vehicle for Cathy Moriarty and David Keath as a dysfunctional couple who have a daughter with a mullet because 1987, it is told in a disoriented style that bounces between flashback and present day without any warning.  It ends up being followable, but only after much annoyance in trying to get our barrings along with a slew of murders that point to an obvious culprit whose reveal is treated as a twist.  Keath's is a poorly written character from top to bottom who exhibits arbitrary quirks for a gun-toting hillbilly, like a fondness for opera and classical music, the desire to paint himself in kabuki makeup, and having a job as an audiophile engineer.  The motivation behind the killer is of the typically weak, "sure whatever" variety for cinematic psychopaths and Cammell seems far more concerned with the movie's convoluted style than saying anything profound with the subject matter.