Film 13/52: The Medusa Touch (1978)


I first heard about The Medusa Touch in 2019. I was intrigued by a reference to an airliner crashing into a skyscraper, and after watching the trailer, placed an order for an import Blu Ray. It's been in our collection of to-be-watched films since then, so it was an easy selection for this series.

The film starts off with novelist John Morlar (Richard Burton) watching the events of a manned space disaster unfold live on television, during which someone he knows comes into his apartment and bludgeons him to death with a Napoleon statue. Or so we are led to believe. A French investigator shows up on the scene, and is surprised to find that Burton is not quite dead. As he investigates the crime, he is led to Morlar's shrink, played by The Omen's Lee Remick. We soon discover that Morlar believed he had the power to control catastrophic events involving people who have wronged him. As he lies in a coma in the hospital, through flashbacks we learn of multiple examples where people surrounding him suffered in what appear to be coincidental accidents, which according to his journals and his psychiatrist, he has somehow willed to happen. This allows for many interesting set-pieces, including the aforementioned plane crash. It's particularly interesting in that one doesn't expect Morlar to be taken out in the first scene, for all sakes and purposes, though he does show up throughout the flashbacks, and I assume (though heavily bandaged) in the hospital scenes as well. Things escalate as the investigator realizes that Morlar is still controlling events from the hospital bed, and he makes a last-ditch attempt to stop him before more people are killed. The film ends on a powerful note that I imagine came as a surprise to many audience members. I know I would have loved it had I seen it as an 8 year-old. And to think for all these years I only gave Sir Lew Grade love for his other 1978 film that I was very familiar with and fond of — Capricorn One!

Richard Burton was an interesting choice for Morlar; I think I might have preferred Patrick McGoohan in the role. In addition to Remick, a number of familiar faces turn up, including Gordon Jackson (MacDonald from The Great Escape), Harry Andrews (who I recognized from a bit part in Superman), and Michael Byrne (Vogel from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). While it's by no means a great film, I think it can be appreciated alongside the telekinesis-horror films of the 1970s (along the lines of Carrie, The Fury, etc.), and I've always been a sucker for an ending like this one offers. 

I'm not quite sure how this one hadn't gotten my attention sooner; the only thing I can think is that it either didn't get the television airplay that so many other films did, or it wasn't presented as a horror flick. But the latter seems hard to believe, particularly with Medusa in the title, which surely would have caught my eye. Another worthy entry for our big-screen 52 Pick Up series!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers/Return of the Musketeers (1973/1974/1989)

Image
In a coincidental tribute to Raquel Welch following her passing a few weeks back, over the course of a few nights we watched  The Three Musketeers ,  The  Four Musketeers , and Return of the Musketeers  in The Slaughtered Lamb.  The first two films were shot as a single feature, and subsequently split and released a year apart (much to the chagrin of cast and crew members who were paid for a single film!), with the third film reuniting the cast and director fifteen years later. Produced by the Salkind's (who would go on to produce the original Superman films a few years later), and directed by Richard Lester (who was responsible for the classic Beatles films A Hard Day's Night and Help! ), I will admit that I went in with pretty high expectations. In retrospect, coming from the Salkinds I think I was looking for the tale of the Three Musketeers by way of Richard Donner (director of the original Superman and far too many great films to list here), rather than Richard Lester (
Read more

Film 49/52: Warlords of Atlantis (1978)

Image
Growing up, Doug McClure was a staple of weekday afternoon television thanks to three Amicus Studios fantasy films he starred in based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs ( The Land That Time Forgot , The People That Time Forgot , and my favorite,  At the Earth's Core , in which he starred opposite Peter Cushing and Caroline Munro). I was surprised years later to discover that he did a fourth fantasy film (not for Amicus, and from an original screenplay), Warlords of Atlantis . I've had a copy in the library for years, but after showing Vonna the trailer (which showcases several of the films interesting creatures), we selected this one for our 'W' film. McClure is the creator of a diving bell helping a scientist and his son interested in finding the lost city of Atlantis. On their first dive, they're attacked by a sea creature, and after a narrow escape they find a golden statue — an artifact of Atlantis. The ship is attacked by a giant octopus, and several of the
Read more

Film 7/52: The Green Slime (1968)

Image
We've been singing The Green Slime theme song around The Slaughtered Lamb since first considering this as our 'G' entry in the 52 Pick-Up (if you've got an Amazon Echo, ask Alexa to play "The Green Slime"). That may have been one of the reasons why Vonna ultimately decided she could sit this one out, so I was left to face the green slime all on my own. I had a vague awareness that the film was a Japanese co-production, but I wasn't aware that it featured no Japanese actors in the cast! It does have the hallmarks of my favorite Japanese sci-fi films of the era, including cool (if not convincingly filmed) miniature ships and sets, and rubber men-in-suit monsters. Years later, director Kinji Fukasaku would go on to direct the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series (which I have yet to see), and his final film was the very influential adaptation of the novel  Battle Royale . The Green Slime setup is this — an asteroid (Flora) is on a collision course wi
Read more