Haunted (1977)
Directed by Michael A. DeGaetano
VCII Home Video VHS
THE FILM
I watched the film twice. The first time was a year ago. I had thought I remembered very little. When I watched it a second time, the night before I'm writing this, I realized that I remembered quite a bit. The frontier/ ghost town, the two brothers who contribute one major point to the plot but little else, the Indian woman (topless) on a horse, Aldo Ray giving it his all, the blind Virginia Mayo and the phone booth in the cemetery. But, as I watched again, for all my Big City Ways, I still couldn't quite remember what happened. Those moments I retained from the first time are what sticks with me. I'm still a little sketchy on everything that happened...unless it's all more straightforward then I imagined and I'm reading too much into it.
An Indian woman, wrongfully accused and toplessly killed, puts a curse on an old Arizona Frontier town. The current inhabitants are an older blind woman, her two sons and Aldo Ray, the caretaker.* All of them, one way or another, are stuck there. I won't go into too much detail because the joys of the film are the small moments because there are really no big moments, apart from, possibly, the opening. Unfortunate events seem to keep the woman there. The sons seem rather aimless in that 70s kind of way. But, instead of going out and exploring the country, all the desert around them (and living in history, as it were) seems to have cancelled out their Wanderlust. Why wander when the whole of the desert is visible out of your window? The older brother, especially, seems to have an itch to roam but he seems jammed in place. Aldo Ray believes their lives (especially his) are miserable because of the Indian Woman's curse...and he believes it in a rather insane manner.
An Englishwoman arrives at the ghost town. She is a dead ringer for the Indian Woman. Contemporaneously, the older brother moves blind Mom to a home. These two things are too much for Aldo and he begins to go crazy. He is, in fact, Haunted by this curse that he believes has ruined his life. Again, I'll leave out details but Aldo really goes for it. The rest of the cast seem to be in a slow-moving drama about a family collapsing in a town that is collapsing. Mr. Ray is in something slightly different. Some of his actions in the end seem a touch out of place within the context of the film but they give it an ending and close off the curse.
Haunted is not a horror movie. It seems like it might become one, what with the curse, but even the opening text intimates that this might...or might not be...something supernatural. I don't think it is, personally. I think a man had a terrible life and found something to blame it on and then that drove him mad. The tricky thing with the film itself is that much of the first half focuses on one of the brothers and his growing romance with the Englishwoman. Aldo is in a supporting role and gradually becomes the lead. It's a bit odd because the misdirection is out of place here. This film is very deliberately paced and so the slow shift in leads just made me think "Why are the brothers not actually involved in the climax at all?"
(I had this thought: Could the writer/ director have been trying to make the take-charge brother the lead but then his story got away from him when he couldn't get the drama he wanted from that fellow?)
I don't know if I liked this film or not but I found it interesting. It is more interesting then entertaining. A strange one-of-a-kind movie out in the desert with Aldo Ray. I'd watch it again.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
I was watching a copy I made a few years ago off of the VCII VHS. Those things were bricks. Looks and sounds fine. The opening credits advertise a soundtrack. I'd rather get The Last Of The American Hoboes. I preferred the music.
EXTRAS
Sorry. I just see the movie. This could have had all the regular VCII previews on it (Talk of the Town!) but I'm not sure.
Strange thing: At the bottom of the screen, during several scenes, I saw a copyright symbol and then "VCII 1982". I've never seen that on an old-timey VHS before.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It's not a horror film. If it had more laughs, it might be a Woody Allen film. If it had deeper thought behind it, it might be Ingmar Bergman. If every character were slaughtered by Aldo Ray in loving close-up, it might be an H.G. Lewis film. As it is, it's just kind of odd. Like I said earlier, I either got it all and don't realize it or I didn't get it at all. However, I'm not sure a third viewing would improve my review so... Watch it. You might fall asleep or you might just be fascinated by the whole thing. Or, in time-honoured (with a "u") BS fashion, you might do both. It's all valid.
*I was a bit confused on where exactly this took place and why they are living in that group of buildings. If they say why, I missed it. Not enough note taking.
— Dan Budnik, 04.14.11 |
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