**
Cult movie that was the result of a nine-day shoot, from a script written in three days, from a story idea that was produced overnight. And yes it looks it. With the exception of a nudie picture or two, the first film directed by Francis Ford Coppola (before he began using his middle name). Several years ago, young Kathleen Haloran drowned in the pond on her family's Irish estate. Lady Haloran seems to think of little else and her three sons are all affected by the tragedy in different ways. One more than the others, presumably, for somebody is going around hacking people up with an axe. Yet the violence is minimal, the cinematography awkward, and the dialogue stilted. One suspects its cult following must be due to Kathleen, the poor little girl who drowned. We see her alive in a flashback, but more importantly we see her dead. Supernaturally dead, it would appear, for she looks as she did in life; she might simply be sleeping. Her presence literally haunts the film, and when you include a creepy shrine dedicated to her memory and its unlikely location, she overshadows all the rest, an eerie reminder of what horror films are all about: wreckage, despair, and the loss of innocence. The ending encapsulates all this in a single violent act. So not without merit, but with little to offer in the way of traditional entertainment, either. By the way, one of the murders -- the most gruesome one, in fact -- wasn't shot by Coppola. It was ordered after producer Roger Corman saw Coppola's finished film and decided it needed more horror. If it weren't for that, the body count would be cut in half.
Cult movie that was the result of a nine-day shoot, from a script written in three days, from a story idea that was produced overnight. And yes it looks it. With the exception of a nudie picture or two, the first film directed by Francis Ford Coppola (before he began using his middle name). Several years ago, young Kathleen Haloran drowned in the pond on her family's Irish estate. Lady Haloran seems to think of little else and her three sons are all affected by the tragedy in different ways. One more than the others, presumably, for somebody is going around hacking people up with an axe. Yet the violence is minimal, the cinematography awkward, and the dialogue stilted. One suspects its cult following must be due to Kathleen, the poor little girl who drowned. We see her alive in a flashback, but more importantly we see her dead. Supernaturally dead, it would appear, for she looks as she did in life; she might simply be sleeping. Her presence literally haunts the film, and when you include a creepy shrine dedicated to her memory and its unlikely location, she overshadows all the rest, an eerie reminder of what horror films are all about: wreckage, despair, and the loss of innocence. The ending encapsulates all this in a single violent act. So not without merit, but with little to offer in the way of traditional entertainment, either. By the way, one of the murders -- the most gruesome one, in fact -- wasn't shot by Coppola. It was ordered after producer Roger Corman saw Coppola's finished film and decided it needed more horror. If it weren't for that, the body count would be cut in half.