"Torment" follows a young bride-to-be who spends the weekend with her paranoid soon-to-be-mother-in-law at her sprawling San Francisco estate. Meanwhile, a psychotic woman-killer has arrived in the city, and is about to descend on their weekend plans.
This flick was released by New World Pictures in the late '80s and seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, toiling away on video store shelves before vanishing into the abyss. Like most New World Titles, "Torment" is not high art, but it is a fairly clever psychothriller which has some things in common with the '70s giallo. The entire film really looks more like a '70s picture than it does an '80s one; everything from the score to the gritty cinematography gives the impression that you are watching a film made in the mid-1970s. There are a few homages to Hitchcock peppered in, and a number of great visuals that counteract the low budget.
There is a fair amount of suspense established early on before the film throws its singular curveball at the midway point, which is an unusual and crafty one. The last half suffers after this revelation to some degree, as there isn't much left in the way of surprises, but fortunately a spunky performance from Eve Brenner as the protective, wheelchair-bound mother-in-law really amps things up. William Witt, an unknown, plays the schlubby killer, while Taylor Gilbert is serviceable as the clueless protagonist.
Though not a terribly exciting film, "Torment" is a crafty thriller that manages to succeed in more ways than one. It is worth viewing for fans of psychothrillers, and manages to establish itself as a late-'80s curio that feels more like a mid-'70s English-language giallo. 7/10.
