The Death of a Daughter Leads Down to a Psychological Path of EVIL! “The Haunting of Julia” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on May 23, 2023

Limited Edition of “The Haunting of Julia” Available at Amazon.com!

This morning was like any other as the Julia rustles up breakfast for her all-business husband Magnus and their lively vivacious daughter Kate, but when Kate violent chokes on a piece of apple and Julie performs a bloody, untried tracheotomy in a state of panic in order to save her daughter’s life, their lives are forever changed as Katie dies in Julia’s arms. For weeks, Julia’s melancholic depression commits her to hospital care. When she’s ready for release per the Doctor’s recommendation, Julia avoids returning to Magnus as their relationship was never a mutually loving one but rather a normal route connected by the presence of their daughter Kate. In order to restart her life, Julia separates from a controlling Magnus and purchases a magnificent London house only to then be plagued by ghostly occurrences she suspects is the work of her late daughter. What Julia comes to find out is the troubling history of her newfound home.

Mia Farrow solidified herself as a genre actress by starring in the archetype for films revolving around the prince of darkness, Satan, in 1968 with “Rosemary’s Baby.” Unlikely seeing herself as a prominent woman of a notable rite horror, Farrow quickly understood her value in the genre as a complex female lead in the unsettling and gothic protuberance atmosphere style. Nearly a decade later, Farrow stars in the Richard Loncraine directed “The Haunting of Julia,” similar only to the menacing supernatural child component but digs deeper in manipulative complacency, psychological guilt, and of that distorted reality created by the stout motherhood connection. The “Slade of Flame” director set his sights off of Rock’N’Roll inspired dramas around the ugliness of the music industry and onto the filmic adaptation of the Peter Straub novel “Julia,” penned by the Dave Humphries and “Xtro” trilogy director Harry Bromley Davenport. The joint United Kingdom and Canadian production, titled originally as “Full Circle” in the UK, is produced by Peter Fetterman (“The Exorcism of Hugh”), under Fetterman Productions, and Alfred Pariser (“Shivers”) of the Canadian Film Development Corporation.

Mia Farrow’s distinct reactions and acting style very much engulfs the majority of horror experienced in “The Haunting of Julia,” as well as exhibited in “Rosemary’s Baby.” The glassy eyed, long stares, the frightened, coiled emotions that swirl seemingly out of control, and the switch-gear ability to be strong and compliant in tense-riddled situations that just only involve herself in the scene. While “Rosemary’s Baby’ and “The Haunting of Julia” may exact the same gothic aperture for child-themed horror and both are adapted literary works, “The Haunting of Julia” unfolds not in the anticipating of child birth but rather postmortem with the aftermath affliction of a child’s sudden and terrible demise that occurred in the frantic mother’s misguided embrace to take a knife right to her child’s jugular in hopes of dislodging an air denying obstruction. This opening scene shocks us right into a grim framework that simultaneously divides trust and empathy for Julia as circumstances unveil what we might suspect all along, that Julia’s mental health suffered immensely. What pushes Julia into undue stress is her controlling, dispassionate husband Magnus. Played by “Black Christmas’s” Keir Dullea. Dullea pulls off the unsympathetic impassive father who just lost a child and can’t see the underlying psychological unrest his wife suffers. In short, Magnus attempts to gatekeep Julia’s damaged psyche by trying to strong arm her back into normalcy, even going as far as manipulating Julia and his own sister Lily (Jill Bennett, “The Skull”) into slipping his foot into the door with a wife who fled from his grasp as soon as released from the hospital for essentially shutting down after their daughter’s death. That toxic pressure is coupled with the seemingly unnatural incidences in her new home that clash her old life, chained to an unconsciously broken family, with her new life that seeks to decompress from a pair of diverse traumas. “The Haunting of Julia” rounds out the cast with Tom Conti (“Blind Revenge”), Mary Morris (“Prison Without Bars”), Anna Wing (“Xtro”), Pauline Jameson (“Night Watch”), Peter Sallis (“Frankenstein: The True Story”), Susan Porrett (“Plunkett & Macleane), Edward Hardwicke (“Venom”), and Sophie Ward (“Book of Blood”).

More or less forgotten by U.S. audiences due to no fault of the film’s own acclamatory measure or the audiences willing participation, the international produced “The Haunting of Julia” wasn’t publicized in the U.S. despite the two American leads – Mia Farrow and Keir Dullea. Richard Loncraine’s film has incredible merit to the idea of a mother’s loss within the construct of gothic horror, which, in another aspect of unfathomable irony, resembled more closely to the American gothic style of the supernatural sequestered dark house. Yet, this house is in London, wedged in like row homes, but as mentioned numerous times in the film, the house has distinction and grandeur that overlooks the buried ghostly history of the previous owners. Julia absorbs the stories, filters through them, and comes to believe her own daughter is either trying to reach out to her or is hellbent on revenge for the amateur hour tracheotomy. Loncraine does the phenomenal job of shocking our core with the early choking death scene of Julia’s daughter but once that dust settles, the pacing becomes more rhythmic to the point of building, slowly, Julia’s encounters with unknown forces that, at first, are just seemingly bizarre happenstances of left on bedroom plug-in radiators and playground visions of a girl that resembles her daughter cutting up another kid’s pet turtle. These events play into their evident conspicuousness to push audiences deep into Julia’s mysterious milieu, officially sealing something isn’t right with the clairvoyant Ms. Flood’s scarred-screaming vision of a bloody child. Julie become engrossed into learning the truth, eager to determine if that child is her late daughter and is fed tidbits of the house’s history that not only continues her own investigation but other research into other house tragedies that fork-split her presumptions. As all this noise tornadoes around Julia, the stories, the occurrences, the deaths, viewers will never deduce to a reason closer to home, to Julia herself, until possibly too late at the end with a grisly open-ended finale that what Julia has been experience may have been done at her own forlorn hand.

Atmospherically sound, undoubtedly creepy, and spearheaded by strong performances, “The Haunting of Julia” is the unspoken heroine of late 1970s supernatural horror – until now. Imprint and Via Vision of Australia release a limited edition, high definition 1080p, 2-disc Blu-ray set with an AVC encoded BD50 of a new 4K scan transfer of the original 35mm negative. Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1, the 4K scan is super sharp with virtually no compression issues on the formatted storage. Blacks, and negative spaces in general, are rich and void, despite Peter Hannan’s low-contrast and hazy surreal veneer that definitely plays into a psychotronic dreaminess. The resolution goes unaltered, and the natural grain maintains the original theatrical presentation for a revered 4k transfer. The English LPCM 2.0 mono track mix audibly delineates a viable one input split to make the dialogue and all other tracks comprehendible. Despite some slight here and there hissing, dialogue is amped up nicely for better resolved results that still remains mingled with the ambience in an all for one, one for all audio format. “Space Trucker’s” Colin Towns’s insidious and distinctly composed soundtrack reaches into the recesses of soul and strikes at the very nerve of fear with an unsettling score, perfectly suited for a mother drowning in the pitfalls of a supernatural sanctum. Optional English Hard-of-Hearing subtitles are available. The first disc special features include two audio commentaries – one with director Richard Loncraine and Simon Fitzjohn and the second, brand new, commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons, new interviews with composer Colin Towns Breaking the Circle, cinematographer Peter Hannan Framing the Circle, and Hugh Harlow Joining the Circle, a new video essay by film historian Kat Ellinger Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic, the original trailer, and an option to play the film with either “The Haunting of Julia” or “Full Circle” opening title. The second disc is a compact disc of Colin Town’s 11-track score featuring 20 minutes of previously unheard music out of 60:52 of music. The limited-edition set comes with a neat lenticular cover on front of the hard box of what we assume is Julia’s ghost glaring at you from all angles as her eyes follow you. Inside is a clear Blu-ray snapper that’s a little thicker than your traditional snapper and comes with a built-in secondary disc holder. The cover art is simply Mia Farrow cowering outside the bathroom door but the reversible cover displays an original “Full Circle” poster as the front image. The disc arts are illustrative and compositions with the feature presentation disc the same as hard box lenticular without it being lenticular and CD pressed with Mia Farrow’s face in the background and a child’s cymbal banging toy in the foreground. Also in the hard box is a 44-page booklet feature an historical background essay by critic/writer Sean Hogan that has black and white and color photos and various poster art. The film, which comes in as Imprint catalogue # 218, runs at 97 minutes, is unrated, and, is assumed, for region A playback as it’s an Australian release – there is no indication on the package. “The Haunting of Julia” is Mia Farrow’s shining, yet lost effort post Roman Polanksi and is a remarkable look at subtle disconnection from extreme guilt when in every corner, every sign, is thought to be about your lost child.

Limited Edition of “The Haunting of Julia” Available at Amazon.com!

Is Deceptional Fraud More EVIL Than Psychopathy? “Paranoiac” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on February 28, 2022

Get “Paranoiac” on the Collector’s Edition Scream Factory Blu-ray!

The parents of siblings Tony, Simon, and Eleanor Ashby die in a tragic plane crash. Two years later, Tony commits suicide by plunging himself off a cliff into a watery grave with his body never having been recovered from the ebb and flow of crashing waves upon the oceanic rocks. Eleven years later, the long thought dead Tony suddenly and unexpectedly returns to what’s left of his family: an overprotectively cold and matriarchal substitute in Aunt Harriet, a narcissistic and alcoholic brother Simon, and a sister, Eleanor, on the precipice of losing her mind from grief over Tony’s death. Shocked by this return, the surviving Ashby siblings split their concerns regarding Tony’s authenticity. Eleanor believes her brother is alive and has come back to rebuild the happy relationship between them whereas Simon denounces Tony’s validity and works underhandedly to either expose Tony as a fraud or to get rid of the imposter by any means necessary, especially when the conditions of receiving the Ashby family fortune have nearly come to an end and a hefty inheritance awaits his opulent tastes. Tony’s arrival causes complications with the inheritance, opens up old wounds, evokes new romantic sensations, and regresses transgressional guilt toward a fiery conclusion to the Ashby family mystery.

A ravishingly dark, mystery thriller inspired by Scottish author Josephine Tey’s crime novel “Brat Farrar” from 1949, the 1963 “Paranoiac” works from off of Tey’s dysfunctional and deceptional family building blocks and extending it into a gothic framework of demented greed in a brand-new of-shooting avenue of psychological thrillers from Hammer Films, hoping to branch off the traditional horror trunk and piggyback success off of the American released, 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film, “Psycho.” “Paranoiac” is the junior film of Freddie Francis (“The Skull,” “Torture Garden”) and penned by the longtime Hammer writer, who basically wrote all of Hammer’s classics, Jimmy Sangster (“Horror of Dracula,” “The Revenge of Frankenstein”). Anthony Hinds and Basil Keys served as producers.

“Paranoiac’s” ensemble cast is quite brilliant in their respective roles. Oliver Reed (“Curse of the Werewolf,” “Gladiator”) stands out immensely with a flamboyantly cruel and warped performance as the erratic Simon Ashby constantly under the influence of Brandy, Champagne, or whatever alcoholic beverage he can get his organ-playing hands on. Reed puts out this hateful energy that can’t be ignored and outlines Simon with defined truth about where the character stands with his own flesh and blood – a callously cold and calculating black sheep. Simon becomes fascinating in every scene, every scenario, and continues to unravel as a wild card that always leave us wondering what he’s going to do next. Then there’s sweet and innocent but overly distraught Eleanor from Janette Scott in complete sibling behavioral polarity that sinks Eleanor further and further into madness designed by those close to her. Scott, who also had a starring role in “The Old Dark House” that was released the same year, came aboard relatively new to Hammer but equates her status against Reed, who Hammer was grooming to be a prominent leading man for more of their productions, by selling Eleanor’s despair and the deep-seeded craving for her other, more sweeter, brother, Tony. Encompassing the thought dead younger brother is Alexander Davion, another newbie to Hammers’ brand with, in my opinion, a neutral and bland face that doesn’t fit the Bray Studio’s swarthy and distinguished lot of male actors. Davion’s also doesn’t do terribly much with Tony’s sudden resurrection as he folds himself back into Ashby manor. While this could be Freddie Francis’s shrouding display of truth upon Tony’s legitimacy, there is literally no life or passion behind Alexander Davion’s eyes as he stares blankly at accusations and even Eleanor’s incestuous flirtations. Yes, incest becomes a rummaged theme that walks a tightrope between more than just two family members. “Alone in the Dark’s” Sheila Burrell is the stern protector in Aunt Harriet, “Blood Beast from Outer Space’s” Maurice Denham ruffles Simon’s feathers as the Ashby estate treasurer holding all of his inheritance, “The Maniac’s Liliane Brousse nurses a façade over the well-being of Eleanor and the love interests of Simon, and the cast wraps up with John Bonney as the treasurer’s fraudulent son.

Hammer had by 1963 already established itself as a horror powerhouse with the success of colorfully bold, violently stout, and sexually-saturated innuendo classic monster features, such as with “Horrors of Dracula,” “The Curse of Frankenstein,” and “The Mummy.” Capitalizing on the coattails of Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and sitting on the adaptational rights for Josephine Tey’s “Brat Farrar,” Hammer decided to pivot into the crime and suspense thriller direction that alluded to the aftereffects of cerebral breaking blended into elements of collusion, creating an endless tense-filled turbine revolving around the whodunit particles and the who’s veneer is covertly smeared by corruption. In a way other than the similar one word title and an unhinged theme, “Paranoiac” could be mistaken as a Hitchcockian-shot production with the larger than life and depth rich landscapes; the vast wide shots of Isle of Purbeck’s peaks and cliff steeps are engulfed oxymoronically as an idyllically menacing key peninsula landscape centric to Tony’s long thought demise as well as a place of hopelessness as the natural English Channel waves crash relentlessly onto the rocks below. Francis and Sangster hinge the film success on the colossal subtext of brittle strength, guilt, and a vague but prominent suggestion of incest between sister and brother and brother and aunt that, in all honestly, was a personal surprise to myself that it passed the British Board of Film Certification (BBFC). Yet, the insinuation did and paved a real pothole plague path for viewers in a good way that the story kept evolving, kept us on our toes, and when it spiraled, it spiraled quickly and sharp in a descent onto those very hopeless rocks below waiting for our emotions to be swept away lost in a mobile, violent current.

Paranoia runs rampant like an epidemic in this Freddie Francis aptly entitled sullen celluloid “Paranoiac,” the next Hammer film receiving a collector’s edition Blu-ray treatment from Scream Factory, the horror sublabel from Shout Factory! The region A locked encoded Blu-ray features a new 2K scan from the interpositive. By 1963, Hammer was well versed in technicolor, especially for Stateside releases of UK films, but “Paranoic” opts for the black and white picture in another subtle nod to “Psycho.” Under veteran Hammer Film’s cinematographer Arthur Grant, that famous gothic-cladded manor house is aesthetically fetching with in every detail captured by Grant’s 35mm camera as well as the broad wide shots in the bird’s eye view of Isle of Purbeck. Scream Factory releases the film in 1080p, full high definition of the original aspect ratio 2.35:1 with sterling results in extracting details and balancing the contrast without brightening or darkening where not needed or intended. There were no real damage spots to point out nor were any crops or enhancements made to touch up possible problematic or stylistic areas. The release comes with a single audio option in a DTS-HD Master Audio monaural track with slight static in the background. Dialogue is clean and mostly clear with an occasion hiss during more boisterous moments, but the range and depth of a faultless ambience and Elisabeth Lutyens brassy and bass soundtrack comes through symmetrically balanced. English SHD Subtitles are also optional. The special features include a new audio commentary with Film Historian Bruce Hallenbeck, two new interviews with author and critic Kim Newman in Drink of Deception and with film historian Jonathan Rigby in A Toast to Terror – two familiar faces seen in recent Scream Factory’s restorations of Hammer productions, a making-of segment that dives archive interviews with Jimmy Sangster and others going over the genesis of the story and into Hammer’s aspirations at the time, and a theatrical trailer. “Paranoiac” is more than just its creepy, bulbous mask that graces the Mark Maddox gorgeously green illustrated slipcover and snapper case cover art. Rarely does a film evolve from one narrative into another without crisscrossing the stitchwork, becoming overly convoluted beyond repair, yet “Paranoiac” digs in and dilates the already volatile chemistry with integrated and powerful performances from Oliver Reed and Janette Scott that makes this film high on the Hammer watch list.

Get “Paranoiac” on the Collector’s Edition Scream Factory Blu-ray!

Two Undisciplined Girls Do EVIL in the Netherlands! “My Nights With Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 28, 2019

After years with struggling with fame, Susan finds solace in an idyllic and solitude Netherlands’ farmhouse near the waterfront. Her peaceful lodging transforms in a youth hostel as she welcomes three refuge women – Sandra, Olga, and Julie – and one man – Albert – into her life and in exchange for a place to stay, Susan embraces the company after her entanglement with loneliness. Despite Sandra and Olga’s sex-crazed psychopathy and an unhinged Albert’s voyeuristic habits, Susan has been able to maintain an even keel quality of life. That’s until the handsome Anton shows up. His arrival stirs the nest of sexual desires and has Susan questioning her reclusive lifestyle. Anton’s presence also riles up Piet, a crazed women living in a shed on the outskirts of the farmhouse. To make matters more complex, Anton becomes mixed into a murder mystery involving a dead American. Was it the mischievous sexual delinquents Sandra and Olga? Or did the wild Piet finally snap her moral conscious?

During the height of the 70’s sexual revolution, the Dutch seize the opportunity to piggyback their own free love films. Pim de la Parra’s 1978 “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie is an epitome example of the Dutch sex wave genre that shares the tantalizing groping, succulent squeezing, fornicating spooning, and …well, you get the idea. Originally titled as the longwinded My Nights with Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet, & Sandra (whew), this film is the last production of Pim de la Parra’s Scorpio Films from a script co-authored between Parra, Harry Kumel from Belgium, David Kaufman from America, Charles Gormley from Scotland, and Carel Donck from the Netherlands in a melting pot of cultural creativity. “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” sizzles the screen with nudity in characters just walking around or riding on a child’s rocking horse stark naked that’s ostensibly organic for a story beginning with cold blooded, arbitrary murder.

Before partying the circumstantial matron of a youth hostel, Netherlands’ Willeke van Ammelrooy was Eva in “Frank & Eva,” another film by Pim de la Parra. She was also Alicia in “Blue Movie” director Wim Verstappen’s “Alicia” and also played Mira in Fons Rademakers’ “Mira.” As the evidence provides, Ammelrooy is very experienced as the leading lady role, portraying three titular characters from 1971-1974 by post-humorously acclaimed Netherland directors. Yet again, Ammelrooy plays a titular character in Susan, a country cloistered luminary seeking to be a forgotten face, but Ammelrooy steely performance of a woman pretending not to be hiding secrets is a fascinating insight into a character’s personal shielding; however, when Anton, “Wet Dreams’” Hans van der Gragt, their hot and cold dynamic creates a formidable hard love rigidity influenced by forces internal to Susan and external forces from those her immediate life at the farmhouse. Olga and Sandra have more intoxicating behaviors that run the story amok and what’s more interesting about the actresses, Franulka Heyermans and Marja de Heer, is that they’re amateur actresses according to Pim de la Parra. Cold and, yet, lively, Heyermans and Heer have mountainous ration and serve Parra genuinely. Marieke van Leeuwen, Serge-Henri Valcke, Jerry Brouer, and Nelly Frijda round out the small cast.

Pim de la Parra’s influences stem heavily from Alfred Hitchcock. The filmmaker implements voyeurism and the wrongfully accused that are essential to the Hitchcockian style. I also find it hard to believe that on the first day of shooting on Hitchcock’s birthday, August 13, that Pim de la Parra’s first scenes are that of birds on a beach. Coincidence or a little salute to the master of suspense, either way, the now retired filmmaker unifies a harrowing score with birds and a beach to not only by respects to Hitchcock, but also sets the tone of the film of an erotic thriller with blotches of dark comedy strewn in.

Cult Epics proudly releases “My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, & Julie” onto a new high definition two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo set. Presented in a widescreen, 2.35:1 aspect ratio, in a 1080p transfer from the original 35mm print, preserved by the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam. The original print is nearly pristine with a palatable amount of stock grain and with only a minor amount of film wear. No observations of border enhancing or sharpening that would dilute the bona fide quality. The Dutch DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio track nicely accompaniments the film with depth and range and the Dutch dialogue upfront and present and the very Hitchcock-esque soundtrack by Elisabeth Lutyens (“The Skull”) provided a perfect suspense drive score in her last composer post. Supplements includes an introduction by Pim de la Parra, poster and photo video gallery, Scorpio Films’ shorts that includes “Heart Beat Fresco,” “Joop,” and “Joop Strikes Again,” and Scorpio Films’ theatrical trailers. Cult Epic’s region 1 DVD and the all region Blu-ray release favors another Dutch sex wave cinema flavor with just modernization of an intertwinement of erotically charged lust and lives with repulsive and deadly temperaments and with Pim de la Parra at the helm, you’re going to get primo framing and angles sure to captivate.