The Fantasist

I just finished watching this movie this weekend for the second time, having seen it on TV about six years ago. And it was just as good as I remembered it to be. The plot twists are very very clever, enough to keep you guessing to the end. My g/f commented that it was a bit slow to get started, but once we got into it, she was guessing who the culprit was all the way through.

One other thing - the scenery shown of Ireland is absolutely gorgeous.

This film is supposed to be a thriller, but for more than an hour it's EXCRUCIATINGLY boring, despite the beautiful locations. Things become slightly more interesting in the final 10 minutes, which have a peculiar kinkiness. But the ending on the ship is typical slasher stuff.

In the 38 year period between his first film, folk horror classic The Wicker Man, and his last, The Wicker Tree, director Robin Hardy only made one other film: The Fantasist, a bizarre slasher thriller set in Dublin, Ireland. It's not a good film - the characters are too eccentric, the script is incredibly silly, and the pace is very slow - but it's still worth watching just to immerse yourself in the sheer bizarreness for an hour and a half...

Moira Harris plays lovely 'Oirish lass Patricia Teeling, who leaves the countryside for a teaching job in Dublin; her move coincides with a spate of murders, the killer at first phoning his victims to try and bore them to death with terrible poetry, but opting to stab them in the back when his dreadful recitals fail to do the trick.

Meanwhile, Patricia is looking for the man of her dreams, but only seems to attract oddballs: a hairy man with halitosis (in a nightclub where Level 42 are the house band!); weirdy-beardy English master Robert Foxley (John Kavanagh), who gargles wine loudly in restaurants and wants to rub Patricia's tummy; and American Danny Sullivan (Timothy Bottoms), who pretends to be an Albanian osteopath and talks dirty to his wife over the phone.

After Patricia discovers Danny's wife with a knife in her back, she starts to receive phone calls from the maniac; police inspector McMyler (Christopher Cazenove) investigates.

The nonsensical murder mystery plot makes the film feel a bit like an Irish giallo at times, especially the scene in which Patricia escapes from one of the suspects by climbing out of a window and crawling across the roof of the building (very Argento). However, Hardy's inept handling of the film in general makes it hard to believe that it was directed by the same man who gave us the impeccable The Wicker Man. The finalé is particularly strange, the killer trapping Patricia in his photographic studio, and forcing her to strip so that he can use her bare ass as a set of bongo drums.

So, technically speaking, the film is fairly terrible, but for those who enjoy bad films, it could prove quite entertaining.

I saw this movie for one reason and one reason only and, probably like everyone else who has seen it, that reason is because the film is directed by Robin Hardy; the man behind the all-time cult classic 'The Wicker Man'. I honestly have no idea how a man behind such a great film as The Wicker Man could end up directing something as crap as this. The Fantasist does not have a very good reputation, and that's hardly surprising as this film is completely boring. It was thirteen years between the release of this film and Robin Hardy's classic, but I actually believe that shooting for The Fantasist began in 1974, only production was slow as the cast and crew kept on falling asleep during shooting! The film takes place in Ireland and follows an Irish woman who moves to Dublin. It's not long before she begins receiving obscene phone calls from a stranger, and (coincidently?) there also happens to be a killer on the loose known as 'The Phone Call Killer'. Most people in that situation would change their phone number, but our heroine is drawn to the mystery caller instead...

The film starts off slowly but any hopes of it getting better are quickly dashed when it becomes quite clear that the pace is never going to pick up. This movie will grind you down; such is the sheer boredom on display. The film could be termed a slasher since people get sliced and diced, but it seems that Robin Hardy wanted it to be a bit more than just a slasher, and it's backfired horribly as there is no interest created around the central premise which absolutely kills it. Robin Hardy also had no luck in the casting department either as American actress Moira Harris fails to convince or generate any sympathy from the audience. The Wicker Man was a largely aesthetic affair with the picturesque island featuring strongly as well as the standout ending; but there's nothing like that here; all the locations are dreary and drab and that adds to the intense torture that is The Fantasist. Hardy probably wanted the movie to be a bit steamy and while there are brief flashes of nudity, the film certainly isn't sexy (though a sequence that sees the killer undress a girl with his knife is one of the few memorable moments). It all boils down to a stupid and predictable ending and overall, I would not recommend this rubbish even to hardcore fans of The Wicker Man.

1. If you are filming a movie in scenic Ireland, your lead should be: a).a famous American actress, b). an unknown Irish actress, c).an unknown American actress who is incapable of maintaining a convincing Irish accent.

2. When your villain, "the Phone Call Killer", telephones his victims he should: a). speak in a eerie, sinister voice, b). not speak at all but only breathe heavily, c).talk like Kelsey Grammar's character "Sideshow Bob" on "The Simpsons".

3. If you are making a murder mystery, you should have: a).a multitude of possible suspects, b). only two possible suspects, c).only two suspects, one of whom is such a ridiculously over-the-top red herring that he couldn't possibly turn out to be the killer.

4. At the climax of the movie the villain should: a). stalk the heroine with a big knife, b). chase the heroine with a giant axe, c).use the heroine's bare ass for his own personal set of bongos.

5. If you are director Robin Hardy and you have directed the cult horror classic "The Wicker Man" you should follow it up with: a).another cult horror classic, b). a lesser--but not completely embarrassing--effort, c)."The Fantasist"