Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2016 | 5/52 | Giallo
Sarah crawls into a bathtub. Her feet touch something on the edge of the tub. She convulses and dies.
Elise drives a white convertible to a picaresque villa. She drinks a refreshing Coca-Cola when a bump startles her. In walks Marcus, her stepson, whom she had not met until now. He wasn’t supposed to be home until later that week.
Sarah was Marcus’s mother.
Marcus touches Elise in uncomfortable ways, rubbing her arms and clasping her breasts. Elise tries to ignore it.
Marcus steals a letter from the mail. He claims it’s from a book club, but Elise questions him, mostly out of curiosity. Marcus tells her that Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt for being curious.
When Paul comes home, he dotes on Marcus more than Elise.
Marcus tries to sew dissent between Paul and Elise. He whispers to Paul that Elise doesn’t like him and that Elise suspects Marcus of stealing money.
Elise finds pieces of a torn-up expulsion letter from Marcus’s school. She goes to Marcus’s school to get the facts. What she learns about Marcus shocks her. What’s worse, Paul knew about it.
The movie is well-structured. It doesn’t go where I expected — it’s a giallo, so it has to twist — but it all fits the text of the movie.
Britt Ekland gives a fantastic performance — she has a lot to do in this movie, and she pulls it off.
I worry about Mark Lester’s mental health after being in movies like this.
On the surface, this is another bad seed story. Underneath, however, is something disturbing and wild.
Thoughts/Spoilers
- I recently saw Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun.
- Phenology - the study of seasons and cycles. I guess Marcus is supposed to be a little genius.
- Squeezing water out of a toy positioned at his hip
- The film has a lovely giallo soundtrack by Stelvio Cipriani. He also composed for Bay of Blood, Pieces, and The Laughing Woman, among others.
- Elise has that hair bump that makes her hair look massive
- Marcus has visions of drowning Elise.
- Marcus watching the pig butchered
- Big yikes at the nude black woman covered in fruit at an otherwise white party.
- Marcus swinging his cricket bat while talking about Sarah
- The painting of Sarah on the cross — I guess that’s Sophie’s art style.
- “Hey genius, what are you reading, De Sade?” Elise drunkenly berates Marcus
- Paul pushing Elise over and not helping her up was heartbreaking. She does the little handshake like, “Oh, come off it and help me,” but he walks away in disgust.
- Elise stripping for Marcus to get info out of him is fucking wild
- Marcus throws rocks at the dead dog in the pool
- That did… not go how I expected
- Oh no. Oh no 😬
- Wait what???