Skip to main content

The Victim (1972) / Exhibit A (2007)






Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched) stars in this early 70’s made for TV mystery about a woman who goes to her sister’s country house and begins to suspect something is amiss when the sister is not there.











Kate Wainwright (Montgomery) has a phone conversation with her sister Susan, who tells Kate that she plans on divorcing her husband, Ben (George Maharis). After hanging up, Susan is confronted by a mystery person. Kate decides to drive up to Susan’s country home to spend time with her. She gets to the house but finds Susan is not home. A storm begins, and Kate finds herself trapped in the house, with only the creepy, grouchy housekeeper (Mrs. Hawkers) who lives next door. As the night progresses, Kate begins to suspect that someone else is lurking around as she keeps hearing odd noises around the house.









The movie is your typical retro TV affair, with suspenseful music, POV shots of a mystery person spying on Kate, and a plot filled with all the classic thriller tropes, including thunder and lightning, the power going out, the telephone line being cut, and a red herring character. At about 75 minutes, the movie zips by fast, with Kate slowly realizing that something is wrong, leading to the overdramatic and hilarious climax. If you love this cheesy retro stuff, it's available on YouTube.








This next movie is a 2007 found footage thriller about a young teenage girl who documents her family life with her new video camera, unaware that she's about to capture a disturbing descent into chaos.













Judith is gifted a camcorder by her father Andy, and she uses it to record footage of her family. She documents the everyday events in the lives of Dad, Mother Sheila, and brother Joe. She appears to have a secret crush on the teenage girl next door, Claire, and seems crushed when her parents announce that they will be moving to a new home now that the dad Andy has gotten a promotion at work. As Judith continues to film the family preparing for the move, she begins to notice increased tension from her father, including spying on him outside at night, nervously smoking a cigarette, and having frequent arguments with her mother. As she continues to film, she stumbles upon things that the father has been hiding, leading to escalating tensions within the family.











The movie is decently acted, slowly showing the father's descent into madness as he finds himself increasingly stressed over finances, behaving erratically and having explosive arguments with his wife and son. Instead of the usual supernatural shenanigans that most found footage films give us, it's interesting to see one that shows how tension can destroy a family and lead to violence and tragedy. It's like one of those true crime stories told through the lens of home video recordings. If you enjoy the found footage genre, as well as true crime stories (even though this is fiction), you might enjoy this one. It's available on Tubi. 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ultraman Omega finale

Episode 25, the series finale of Ultraman Omega aired this Friday. From the very first episode I was hooked, and the series continued to maintain a high quality until the surprisingly emotional end. Sorato (Omega) regained all his memories, learning that he was one of many Space Gazers, who's job is to watch a planet and not interfere with any wars between the species (in Earth's case, humans and kaiju). A space Gazer's job is to observe, study and take notes, to learn from a planet's successes and mistakes, in the hopes of finding the right formula to achieve universal peace. Having returned to his previous role as simply a watcher, Kosei, Ayumu and Sayuki were forced to rely on themselves and their team to defeat the powerful kaiju Zomera. As he continued to watch the battle, Sorato/Omega found himself wrestling with the inactive role he was meant to do and his memories of the friendships he had forged with the others, as well as the examples of human kindness he had ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Help Me… I’m Possessed (1974) / #Missingcouple (2024)

I've watched some weird, obscure horror movies throughout my life. I can now add this lurid 1974 schlockfest to that growing list. In a castle in the desert, Dr. Arthur Blackwood runs a sanitarium filled with mentally disturbed patients (as well as staff). He claims to be working on finding a way to cure people of any violent tendencies they have, and brags about his younger sister, innocent, child-like Melanie, as evidence that his treatment works. When she was a child, their parents had to keep her locked up and chained in the basement, to control her violent fits. Now that he's cured her, Arthur has his wife Diane come to the castle to meet Melanie, so that they can be one big, happy family. Diane begins to grow suspicious that something is amiss after a Sheriff shows up investigating the murder of 2 local teens, and sets about on her own investigation, hoping to uncover the sinister secrets that she feels her husband is hiding. Help Me... I'm Possessed is an outrageous,...
Post a Comment
Read more

S.H. Figuarts Father of Ultra

Last week I received the latest SHF Showa Ultra figure, the one and only Father of Ultra, who made his debut in the series Ultraman Ace. He’s the 1st of the two Ultra related August releases I had pre-ordered (the other being Ace Killer). Father of Ultra is easily recognized by the huge horns on his head. The rest of his body is the standard red and silver color scheme that the other original Ultra brothers have (different colors wouldn’t be introduced until Ultraman Tiga decades later). Bandai did a fine job in capturing his look, much more accurate than the highly stylized Ultra Act version, which made him quite muscular. For his accessories, he comes with 6 pairs of hands (fists, two sets of holding, 2 sets of flat/karate chop, and grappling). He has an extra right flat hand that shoots out his signature beam, called the Father Shot. What makes this different from other releases is that the beam and hand are 2 separate pieces, with a clear plastic peg on the side of the fingers that...
Post a Comment
Read more