The Kirlian Witness (1978)

The title of this seventies oddity refers to Kirlian photography, which is the process of photographing living objects in an electromagnetic field which makes it look as if the objects have an aura. (According to skeptics the kirlian effect is nothing more than the object conducting an electric current). The film is not about Kirlian photography, however, it's about the implications of it: the fact that plants have an aura which reflects their mood.Lauri (Nancy Boykin) owns a flower shop in the New York neighborhood of Soho. In her spare time she does research on telepathic contact with plants. When her sister Rilla (Nancy Snyder) introduces her new boyfriend Robert (Joel Colodner) she warns her sister: 'I sense… my plants sense he's a bad person.' When Lauri is found dead a little later, Rilla starts believing one of the plants must have witnessed the murder. With help from her dead sister's research Rilla learns how to establish telepathic contact with the plants and thus discover the identity of the killer.The Kirlian Witness almost completely takes place in and around one apartment building in New York, and it has no more than a handful of characters. It makes for a claustrophobic viewing experience, full of quiet tension.What makes The Kirlian Witness not only interesting, but also stand out within the sub genre of seventies paranormal thrillers, is its complete lack of sensationalism. It isn't comparable to say, The Fury (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979), The Medusa Touch (1978) or The Manitou (1978), to name a few of those movies, released around the same time.If anything The Kirlian Witness is comparable to early Cronenberg movies because of its prosaic approach to the bizarre subject matter, its cold and bleak atmosphere and its detached stance towards its characters. Much like Cronenberg did with Scanners and The Brood writer-director Jonathan Sarno doesn't even try to convince the audience of the reality of his supernatural premise. Paradoxically enough, the viewer accepts it immediately as a given within the world of the film and is not distracted by any clumsily developed claims to authenticity which plagued most of the aforementioned films.This was released on VHS in The Netherlands in the early eighties. I haven't seen it since anywhere.

Entirely original thriller is hampered a bit by sluggish lulls, yet is conceptually revolutionary and comes off more credible than its premise might suggest. When a woman claiming to possess an unearthly connection to plant-life dies mysteriously, her sister, compelled to put to rest unanswered questions in the matter, begins an investigation of plant/human communication phenomena. Her shocking conclusion is that her sister's houseplants are not only cogent key-witnesses to the murder, but they may also be attempting to warn her that she is in similar danger.Honorable performances and a wonderfully offbeat story make this low-budget effort a most enjoyable surprise...possibly not so easy to attain, but worth tracking down.6/10

Sort of a murder mystery with a weird thread running through it all - "plant communication," "kirlian photography," and to a much lesser degree: auras, meditation, "pyramid power" etc. The musical score is good, the acting decent, the story OK. This could have been more interesting and engaging, and is the sort of movie which could perhaps benefit from a remake.Oh - and there's nothing involving dogs, spatulas, or warnings against going in the water, as another user wrote - perhaps he was thinking of another movie.

The deadeningly slow pace is what ruins this picture. A woman whose sister was murdered uses kirlian photography to try and solve the crime. An interesting idea but a livelier script was needed. Lawrence Tierney has a brief cameo.