DON'T GO TO SLEEP

Robin Ignico

DON'T GO TO SLEEP (1982). Director: Richard Lang.

Phillip (Dennis Weaver) and his wife Laura (Valerie Harper) move into a new home with their two children, Mary (Robin Ignico) and Kevin (Oliver Robins of Poltergeist). Strange things begin to happen and Mary seems to be under the spell of her sister, Jennifer (Kristin Cumming), who died in a car accident some time before. Is Mary psychologically disturbed due to the trauma of her sister's death or is Jennifer's ghost out to destroy the family? Don't Go to Sleep shouldn't work, but thanks to excellent acting from the entire cast, taut and suspenseful direction, and a compelling script by Ned Wynn, it emerges as a memorable, creepy, disquieting and very uncompromising horror telefilm. Tragedy keeps piling on tragedy, and Weaver [Duel] and Harper [Stolen: One Husband] excel in difficult roles wherein they have to deal with things that (hopefully) few people would have to endure in real life. A cast stand-out is Robin Ignico, one of the most talented child actors I've ever seen, giving a nuanced, complex, and chilling performance. Ruth Gordon is peppery as the grandmother and Robert Webber is fine as a psychologist.

Verdict: A family tragedy disguised as horror. ***.

A DOUBLE LIFE

Shelley Winters and Ronald Colman

A DOUBLE LIFE (1947). Director: George Cukor.

Anthony John (Ronald Colman) is a well-known theater actor who is divorced from, but still in love with, his ex-wife, Brita (Signe Hasso of A Reflection of Fear). They have remained friends and co-workers and decide to do their rendition of Shakespeare's Othello. Never too tightly wrapped to begin with, Anthony begins unraveling as the successful show goes on month after month, developing an intense jealousy over Brita (and a publicist named Bill played by Edmond O'Brien), that threatens to rival Othello's equally unfounded jealousy over Desdemona. Is someone going to pay the ultimate price for Anthony's madness, and who will it be? A Double Life has a famous star -- Colman won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance -- and director, but the movie is successful neither as drama nor suspense film. The characters in the script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin are too superficial to make us actually care about anyone, and there is no real tension in the movie, Shelley Winters plays a waitress that Colman dallies with, but this very good actress is hardly given enough to work with in her two brief scenes with the star. Signe Hasso comes off better as Desdemona than Colman does in his okay but often hammy interpretation of Othello. There are people who really love this movie (they go on about it as if were along the lines of he actual Othello) and Colman's performance, but I think Colman has given better performances in much better pictures than this. Betsy Blair has a nice bit as a hopeful actress, and Ray Collins, Whit Bissell, and Joe Sawyer also have minor supporting roles. Cukor has directed better melodramas than this, including Gaslight and A Woman's Face. In the final sequence Hasso seems to be indulging in a bit of silent movie acting! I believe Colman's Oscar was given for his body of work. This bears some similarities to the earlier The Brighton Strangler, which some may actually consider the better movie..

Verdict: See a performance of Othello instead. **.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?

Ruth Gordon and Geraldine Page

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? (1969). Director: Lee H. Katzin. 

Newly widowed Claire Marrabel (Geraldine Page) discovers that her husband left her with virtually no assets and a lot of debts, so what's a poor woman to do? She kills her housekeepers (we learn this even before the opening credits) at her Arizona dwelling and takes their assets for herself. But she has a formidable adversary in her new companion and potential victim, Alice (Ruth Gordon), who is there, unbeknownst to her employer, to find out what happened to a friend of hers who disappeared. With adept and amusing performances from the two leads, as well as a lively physical fight between the two, it's a shame that they are wasted in a movie as mediocre as Aunt Alice? The film was produced by Robert Aldrich, co-produced by his company, and was filmed at the Aldrich studios, but the role Aldrich most needed to play was as director, as Lee H. Katzin fails to imbue the film with much tension or suspense. The climax occurs nearly fifteen minutes before the comparatively flat wind-up. A dull sub-plot concerning a burgeoning relationship between duller characters played by Robert Fuller [The Brain from Planet Arous] and Rosemary Forsyth only pads out the running time. Anyone expecting another What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  or Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte will be sorely disappointed.

Verdict: Even "aging actresses" deserve better than this. **.