Tormented (1960)

Planning to catch up on some TV and movie viewings over the weekend,I decided that I would kick the weekend off with a short and sweet Horror flick. Checking a box set that fellow IMDber Red-Barracuda had kindly sent me,I found a title that sounded like it would be a less than tormenting viewing.The plot:Becoming engaged to Meg Hubbard, Tom Stewart gets told by his old bit of skirt on the side Vi Mason that she will tell Hubbard about his cheating ways. Discussing this on the top of a lighthouse (mmm...) Mason leans on a loose railing and falls. Stewart has the chance to save her,but goes ho-hum and lets Mason fall to her death. Seeing her body floating in the water,Stewart goes to get it,but finds that it has transformed into seaweed. Thinking the matter is sorted,Stewart focuses on the wedding,but soon gets a ghostly torment.View on the film:Spotting the lighthouse before crashing into the low-rent Poverty Row rocks of the era, co-writer/ (with George Worthing Yates) director Bert I. Gordon & Kiss Me Deadly cinematographer Ernest Laszlo actually put some real effort into the movie,with the limited space of the lighthouse being caught in tight corner shots. Whilst they do throw in the usual things on visible wire tricks of the era, Gordon and Laszlo actually use neat trick shots to torment Stewart with overlapping images of ghostly footsteps and tracking shots to a broken playing record,and a walk down the aisle that smells the flowers with the stench of death.Teaming up with Them! Writer George Worthing Yates,the screenplay by Yates and Gordon puts the ghostly tale on Film Noir rocks,with a great thick line in pessimism that brings child killing to Stewart's mind. Making the relationships he has with women cynical, the writers bring out the tormenting with ghostly whispers boiling Stewart's mind, and leading to a bitter "romantic" ending. Haunted by the eerie screams Juli Reding gives Vi, Richard Carlson peels his beefcake looks off,as Stewart becomes tormented.

Mediocre acting, melodramatic direction, and sometimes vacuous, uneven scripting make this noirish, wannabe chiller a treat to watch. If the screenplay were half as tight as the women's clothes--even those of a fat, middle-aged blind lady--this offering might have emerged as just another half-baked, predictable haunter. But the incongruous dialogue, lurid reactions, and clumsily presented ghostly manifestations (lopped-off heads and hands) make the film a non-stop feast of fun. Eleven-year-old Susan Gordon has the best lines and, unlike most of the cast, delivers them well. (She also has the best wardrobe, even if it does make her look years younger than her actual-age character.) The only dull moments are when Carlson is (obviously not really) playing the piano, and that just means more ectoplasm--and more merriment--is at hand (or head).

After his inactivity caused his mistress' death, a jazz pianist about to be married finds the dead woman's ghost haunting him wherever he goes and forcing him to resort to increasingly violent manners to keep his actions a secret.This was a pretty disappointing and really disjointed effort. One of the biggest issues present in the film is the rather banal efforts used in the haunting scenes that, while effective in continuing a present storyline, fail to really provide anything worth getting scared over. The scares are a never-ending series of floating voices only he can hear, disappearing appendages only he can see and whenever he goes to apprehend it finds it's not what he went after but something else entirely, and all the while this generates some lame scenes due to their repeating nature. As well, the lack of danger to the others around him makes it all pretty clear this might be simply a guilty conscience rather than a traditional ghost haunting, and the film does remarkably well at incorporating elements to make it seem that's the case here but that doesn't make for an exciting effort. The low-key nature of the material and middling pace don't help much either, and overall drag this one down enough to overcome the decent special effects to showcase the apparition which marks the film's only other bright spot.Today's Rating-PG: Violence.

From director Bert I Gordon, I was surprised to find in TORMENTED a rather competently made little thriller about a troubled jazz pianist whose lover falls to her death from the top of a lighthouse accidentally..hanging for dear life from the lantern room's Astral bars, Vi calls for Tom Stewart to help, and yet he allows her to fall, crashing to the rocks below. Tom's actions were out of fear that she'll do as she threatened, informing his fiancé of their affair. This act will be quite a burden as Vi returns as a tormenting spirit, haunting him(..could it be his guilty conscience or was Vi so determined to have him, her vengeful spirit would rise from the watery depths to stake her claim at owning him?). Tom's life grows even more complicated when a blackmailer, Nick(Joe Turkel, most know him as Lloyd, the bartender in Kubrick's THE SHINING), who boated Vi to his location, wants compensation due to her never paying him for his services. When Tom makes a decision regarding Nick, his fiancé Meg's(Lugene Sanders) little sister, Sandy(Susan Gordon)catches him in the act only adding to an already difficult situation. The planned wedding could be in danger as Tom's pressures at concealing a secret slowly lead him down a dark path to no return..You know director Gordon is known as a schlock filmmaker, but I think this is one of those times where the story is told in a rather effective way, although his special effects featuring Vi, the ghost, might induce chuckles, such as when her disembodied head and hand appear to him, when her ghostly apparition often pops up unannounced at inopportune times, or a photo taken featuring her face along with Tom and Meg. Unlike other films, though, they aren't as corny(..or, at least I didn't think so, but you be the judge) and the story regarding a man's sins returning to him over and over, never letting go, due to his own mistakes, isn't a bad one. Bottom line..this kind of film has a concept that could work if the filmmakers had the kind of effects which exist today. But, Gordon didn't, so many will have a bit of fun at his expense. I actually liked the movie if just for the finale when a wedding service is actually interrupted by the slamming opening of the church doors accompanied by withering roses, leading up to a disturbing close as Tom contemplates murdering young Sandy because of seeing too much. The final image is a dandy, probably one of Gordon's most compelling closings to any film he's made..a wedding ring lost, and found, with a proclamation actually coming true. Understandably, movies like FOOD OF THE GODS & EARTH VS THE SPIDER would almost make any film look like a masterpiece, but still those didn't feature a story with some merit to it and Carlson is the anchor holding the dramatic elements together. Plus, Carlson's character is quite a noirish archetype..the kind of flawed victim of circumstances, most his own making, who, instead of coming clean to the woman he loves, continues to create a worsening situation for himself. By the end, he's quite scary, especially if you take into count his willingness to possibly throw Sandy from the top of the lighthouse..also his end is quite tragic, but Gordon allows the character to suffer for his bad decisions.