The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

I thought this was a good film.Roger Moore is great as the slightly dull family man Pelham who begins to have a meltdown when strange things start happening to him following a car crash. Apparently when he briefly dies on the operating table his "evil" or more exciting character is released and when he is brought back to life this leads to him having a duplicate. Therefore, his other side starts turning up and doing things opposite to what he would do thus causing him to slowly start to go mad because he was unaware of this.The ending is a bit strange though because the other characters don't appear shocked enough when the two Pelhams meet. They seem to accept a bit too easily that the "evil" Pelham is the genuine one and the "real" Pelham is the phoney despite the fact that the "evil" one acts totally differently to the "real" one in that he is more of a daredevil. Despite this I still enjoyed it because it shows the sometimes real struggle of living a possibly dull everyday life and the wish to have a more exciting one.Good performances make up for the slightly disappointing ending and overall this is a film worth seeing I think.

Having read the other glowing reviews of this film I tracked down a copy. Boy, what a disappointment! Roger Moore undoubtedly enjoyed playing both good and evil characters, what actor doesn't. But the plot, which was apparently used several times before in half-hour TV shows, is really lame. The movie really drags mid-way because they only have that little half-hour plot to stretch out. The plot introduces a large number of contradictory and impossible events, which you initially hope will be explained cleverly. But as the movie drags on your hopes begin to sink as (like "X-Files") they have introduced too many plot elements to be able to resolve. And guess what? They don't resolve any of them! The brief plot synopsis in IMDb tells you ALL you're going to learn about the plot and it's resolution. Poor Roger wears a hideous mustache and spends most of the movie channeling John Cleese with a business suit, cane and bowler hat. But he does a good job of portraying the slow melt-down of a man caught in a movie with a terrible plot. Don't waste your time on this movie, especially if you're a Roger Moore fan. It's just awful.

Could have been good but an indifferent climax spoils it.*** This review may contain spoilers *** The Man Who Haunted Himself is set in London where electronics company executive Harold Pelham (Roger Moore) lives with his wife Eve (Hildegard Neil) & two young children, while driving home one evening Pelham crashes his car after losing control & is seriously injured. Pelham is rushed to hospital where he is operated, during surgery Pelham clinically dies for a couple of minutes but the doctor's manage to revive him. After recovering from the accident & returning from a holiday in Spain Pelham is eager to get back to work but learns that a rival electronics firm is trying to buy his company, strange things start to happen as well with various people saying that they saw Pelham several times the previous week even though he was in Spain on holiday. Pelham at first shrugs it off but soon realises that someone claiming to be him has been interfering in his affairs including having an affair, leaking sensitive company secrets & meddling in his life. Pelham has no explanation as the truth when revealed is beyond belief...This British production was directed by Basil Dearden who ironically died in a car himself about a year after The Man Who Haunted Himself was released & could have been a great supernatural mystery thriller but for the whole ambiguity of it which I personally didn't like, I have nothing against films leaving certain things for the audience to work for themselves but I didn't think The Man Who Haunted Himself made much sense. In particular the start when Pelham crashes his car during what looks like him being possessed even though the climax has Pelham's double claim he was set free during the time he was dead on the operating table, it's never really explained what Pelham's double is or why they can't just live happily together. Why does no-one question why the two Pelham's look identical? Why take one Pelham's word over the other when they both look & sound exactly the same? Don't give me the 'because he's wearing a different tie' rubbish either, the whole plot & the plan of the evil Pelham revolves around the fact that the original Pelham decides to wear a pink tie. Right. It's not all bad news though, until the Pelham double is revealed at the end The Man Who Haunted Himself is a fairly gripping mystery thriller as the original Pelham has to solve the mystery of his double but this set-up is wasted as the climax is a disappointment with no great twist & some surreal touches which are not in keeping with the rest of the film. I just would have liked a clever ending that tied everything together better, that's all. At just under an hour & a half The Man Who Haunted Himself has enough intrigue & mystery to keep you interested although it has a fairly sedate pace. Character's are alright if a little flat, everyone except Pelham is very one-dimensional from his housebound wife to his secretary to his snooker playing friends no-one here is fleshed out to any satisfaction or distinction.Very much a product of it's time The Man Who Haunted Himself has dated badly & screams late 60's early 70's with some shocking fashion choices, hairstyles & interior decorating on display. Although considered a horror film of sorts there's nothing that scary or gory here, there are a few scenes which try to generate tension & suspense but there's no outright explicit horror or scares on show. Based on the television episode Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Case of Mr. Pelham (1955) this was apparently Roger Moore's favourite role & there's even a line of dialogue in which he talks about James Bond in reference to company espionage several years before he actually landed the part of Bond himself.Filmed here in England mainly in London this has decent production values but isn't particularly memorable. The acting is alright, Moore is good & while the supporting cast are decent as well they make little real impression.The Man Who Haunted Himself is a decent time waster, it's an odd supernatural mystery thriller that can't quite decide what it wants to be & ends up being a bit bland & I can't forgive the unsatisfying climax which I didn't feel was any sort of adequate pay-off for the long winded set-up. Watchable in a silly dated way but nothing special.

Despite I was a child when I watched it, I didn't manage to be scared. And I tried.The opening sequence says all. There's this proper gentleman driving his dignified car along the highway, the sun shines in the sky and everything is jolly good when all of a sudden for no apparent reason he pulls out a kind of "evil" face, pushes the throttle down and starts driving like a madman.Then he has an accident, obviously. A bit strange accident, truth be told. We see him squeezing his tyres from side to side for something like five minutes without hitting any other car and finally pulling down some cones and a wooden fence. This must be a serious accident in England though, because next thing he's struggling for his life in the emergency room.Which is notable since his body shows no injuries and there isn't the smallest trace of blood round there. But this is only the beginning. During the surgery (don't ask me what kind of surgery, there were doctors doing stuff and yelling to each other) his heartbeat literally splits in two and becomes "double". I'm not kidding you. There are two different lines doing beep beep now on the monitor of the machinery whereas there was only one moments before. And nobody there seem to notice that.Now, you would expect these unusual events being explained along the movie. I don't know, the devil, reincarnation, something.No way.You are only allowed to know that now there's a second Mr. Pelham in town, dating girls and driving sports cars dressed like a buffoon (Where does he sleep? Where does he get his money? Does he have a driving license to show to the police in case they stop him?).We can understand this movie only if we consider it not a horror but a goofy social satire on middle-class dullness. An "American beauty" ante litteram. And even so...I loved the very English background and the seventies atmosphere.Not actually a movie, rather a good laugh.