Back from the Dead

I am clad, that i found out about this movie, surprised it not got many comment on it

A newly married young woman, is possessed by the evil spirit of her husband's deceased first wife.

I really enjoy this movie, it not scary or creepy but some how this movie dose have eerie moments in places.

I really enjoyed the plot of the movie, the dose not take to long to get going , the movie flows really well.

There was not one dull second in this movie, it kept intrude from start to the very end!

The acting was really good from the whole cast but there were some very wooden acting from some of the cast members

7 out of 10

After his new wife Mandy (Peggy Castle) has a seizure, Dick Anthony (Arthur Franz) finds that she has become possessed by the spirit of his first wife Felicia, who drowned six years earlier. Dick's sister-in-law Kate (Marsha Hunt) suspects that Felicia's mother is somehow responsible and goes to occultist Maitre Renall (Otto Reichow) for help.

Back From the Dead is one of the earliest horror movies to deal with the subject of Satanic cults and of possession, sub-genres that would become much more popular in the late-'60s and early-'70s thanks to films such as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist.

The reason this one isn't better known is that, despite its intriguing premise, the script is strictly second-rate and the pacing dreary. Director Charles Marquis Warren is clearly out of his comfort zone, his stock-in-trade being the Western, and he fails to conjure up any real atmosphere or suspense, the overly talky material not helping matters.

Castle is captivating as Mandy/Felicia, her beauty one reason to seek out the film, but this is an unremarkable movie on the whole, one that ends in a muddled and rushed manner as though even Warren had grown tired of it.

There are shades of Noël Coward in this clever little mystery, and though the cast are all a bit wooden, it's not a bad low-budget effort. We start with a distracted "Miranda" (Peggie Castle) who is distressing her new husband "Dick" (Arthur Franz) by going into hysterics, a coma, then emerging claiming her name is "Felicia". Her sister "Kate" (Marsha Hunt) is even more bemused when she learns that was the name of his late wife. Is she just over-stressed or might she actually be being possessed by the returning spirit of the deceased woman whose death saw her fall from a cliff into the murky waters beneath. It turns out that the mother of "Felicia" is adept in the dark arts and so she (Helen Wallace) is all too willing to accept the story, but her husband (James Bell) is much more sceptical. Seeking clarity, they send for "Renault" (Otto Reichow) who lives locally and might have a solution to this messy psychological conundrum - though he's clearly not a man to be trusted, either! What is going on? With the scene set, this plays out quite intriguingly for a time and had the cast just been a little more robust, it could have been quite a bit better. The leading roles are pretty much all disappointingly underplayed: Reichow sounds like he could have a future career as Arnold Schwarzenegger's dialogue coach; and the standard of the production isn't really up to much with scenes clearly shot against backdrop cinematographers that aren't always as well synched as they might have been. It's still quite an exciting watch, though, and with a soundtrack straight out of the "Outer Limits" and even a secret doorway, it's not too bad at all.

Dick (Arthur Franz) is puzzled. While his first wife, Felicia, died long ago, suddenly after listening to a weird record, his second wife becomes possessed with the soul of the first wife! Oh, and the first wife just happens to be evil and will do ANYTHING to keep this new body. Can Dick or his nice sister-in-law (Marsha Hunt) manage to put things right and bring back the second wife once and for all? Or, is this simply a case where it's too late...and she's been repossesed?

In some ways, the plot to "Back from the Dead" is like taking Daphne Du Maurier's "Rebecca" and injecting it with EVIL and the supernatural...or perhaps a bit of LSD! Either way, it makes for a strange yet watchable horror/supernatural film...one worth seeing IF you like the genre and have a high tolerance for the silly.

1957's "Back from the Dead" paired Arthur Franz and Peggie Castle as husband and wife Dick and Mandy Anthony, accompanied by her sister Kate (Marsha Hunt) to his California seaside home because of Mandy's pregnancy. The raging sea offers little comfort to the apprehensive Mandy, something calling out to her before an epileptic seizure that causes an unfortunate miscarriage. She awakens to call her husband 'Dicken' and does not recognize her own sister, but when she refers to herself as 'Felicia' Dick recognizes her as his first wife, who was believed to have drowned six years earlier. Since he never once mentioned Felicia to his new wife it's a mystery as to what has occurred, and when she goes to see the dead woman's parents there can be no doubt that Felicia is indeed 'back from the dead.' The real star of the film is Marsha Hunt, easily out acting Franz and Castle, doggedly determined to free Mandy from the evil spell cast by local cult leader Maitre Renault (Otto Reichow), whose powers appear to be woefully inadequate if he's unable to dispatch the only person who's on to him. Virtually nothing is made of the Satanic cult, so it's less a case of "The Exorcist" than another run of the mill Bridey Murphy clone, reincarnation being such a hot topic at the time that author Catherine Turney only now was allowed to adapt her own 1952 novel into a sadly muddled script. Hunt herself correctly felt that it wasn't a good film but a solid premise that makes one stay tuned to see what happens; the main problem is that we never get to know the real Mandy before she's possessed by 'Felicia,' growing more predictable until the underwhelming climax. Double billed theatrically with "The Unknown Terror," another less than sturdy effort from Western specialist Charles Marquis Warren, both films quickly forgotten once TV residuals subsided.