Susan Wilcox (Parkins) is finally coming home to San Francisco, after 7 years in a Swiss sanatarium. She's come to terms with being sexually attacked as a child and has come back to her loving mother, Miriam (Stanwyck). Upon arriving home she's met by her step father, Harold (William Windom) and the handyman on the estate, John (Arthur O'Connell) All is well until Susan starts to feel haunted by the past. She senses someone watching her in the woods, hears a man breathing in a dark room at night. She starts to feel as if she's coming unhinged when she sees her stepfather drowned in her bathtub and faints, only to find out that nothing is amiss when she comes to. Will Susan be able to leave the past behind her or is someone making that impossible?
This thriller has some unexpected twists and turns to it and it's fun to see Parkins in something other than Valley of the Dolls (1967). She looks great here in a hippie-chic kind of way. Look for Roddy McDowell as a doctor who's trying to help. This title has never been released on DVD. It is available in full on YouTube, however. Part one is above, uploaded by TVTERRORLAND.
Obscurity factor: 9 (not on DVD, available on YouTube, largely forgotten)
Another Aaron Spelling Production - he did quite a few of these TV movies...I didn't realize that. And director John Llewellyn Moxey pops up, again. Screenplay writer Jimmy Sangster has a few classics to his name...including the Bette Davis 60s flicks, "The Nanny" & "The Anniversary", as well as "Scream, Pretty Peggy."
ReplyDeleteOh, in the first ten minutes, watch for the visible "boom mic," during the mother/daughter breakfast scene.
It aired 40 years ago, last week. Time flies....
Yes, I noticed that boom mike too...
ReplyDeleteBelieve it, or not, it is "boom mic".
ReplyDelete