Dominique

I was pleasantly surprised at this movie. Expecting B-rate 70's schlock (not that there is anything wrong with that) I witnessed a movie that actually held my attention without me having to snipe at it for entertainment. My major complaint - this movie was too long by half. We got a few too many scenes of Ballard waking up, putting on his house coat, and walking to somewhere. Something else happens - Ballard puts his housecoat on again and walks. Acting was stiff at best, and it looks as if somebody forgot to pay the light bill, but those could be overcome by a somewhat interesting plot line, a unexpectedly brilliant ending, and some psych. intrigue I didn't think possible in the 70's. I just wish somebody would talk more than 1 sentence somewhere in the movie.

A man drives his wife Dominique to suicide so he can claim her inheritance, she returns from the grave to enact a richly deserved revenge.

This British chiller is a film that clearly seems to have something of a bad reputation. I have to stand against the crowd here though because I personally find this flick somewhat entertaining and even thrilling in places. The story may be a little predictable and it may also require the audience to stretch their credibility at times. But, seriously, so what? Many films of this type have these types of issues. It may be no coincidence that its title resembles the French classic Les Diaboliques a little because Dominique is essentially a reworking of a few core ideas from that one but with a few different angles of its own. Its director is Michael Anderson who not long before had made the impressive sci-fi film Logan's Run. Also from that film was actress Jenny Agutter who has a small but important role in this one. There is a smattering of other familiar faces from British films too. But mainly this works as a spooky horror-thriller. It really is nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be.

To call a film about a crippled ghost taking revenge from beyond the grave lame and lifeless would be too ironical but this here is an undeniably undistinguished combination of GASLIGHT (1939 & 1944) via LES DIABOLIQUES (1954); while still watchable in itself, it's so cliché-ridden as to provoke chuckles instead of the intended chills. However, thanks to the dire straits in which the British film industry found itself in the late 1970s, even a mediocre script such as this one was able to attract 10 star names - Cliff Robertson (as the conniving husband), Jean Simmons (in the title role), Jenny Agutter (as Robertson's artist half-sister), Simon Ward (as the enigmatic chauffeur), Ron Moody (as an ill-fated doctor), Michael Jayston (as Robertson's business partner), Judy Geeson (as Simmons' best friend and Jayston's wife), Flora Robson (as the housekeeper), David Tomlinson (as the notary reading Simmons' will) and, most surprisingly perhaps, Jack Warner (as a gravestone sculptor) - although most of them actually have nothing parts, I'm sorry to say!

**SPOILERS** Cliff Robertson looks like he just walked on the set without knowing what the movie's all about and without a script to cue him in this vary slow and and dark,the movie makers must have saved a mint on the low electricity bill, Ghost/Suspense/Thriller "Dominique is Dead".

Stock-broker David Ballard, Cliff Robertson, is on the verge of going bankrupt in his stock picking and investing business and needs loads of ready cash fast to avoid it. With David's wife Dominique, Jean Simmons, in control of the family fortune he has to work fast to either drive her insane or to suicide in order to inherit her estate and rigs up all kinds of gimmicks to do it.

After a while Dominique is totally unsure if she's losing her mind or if what she's been seeing and hearing in the dead of night are real. Before you know it David finds her hanging in the greenhouse dead, an obvious suicide. Things now seem to look up for the scheming and maniacal David with Dominique's dead and him to be the one to get his hands on her money, and keep his stock business from going under, but instead the exact opposite begins to happen. Strange sounds in the night with the piano playing Dominique's favorite musical piece all by itself and even Dominique herself appearing out of nowhere and haunting David driving him out of his mind like he did to her.

David really gets shaken up when he's called by the cemetery manager where Dominique is buried to find his own headstone next to her's stating that he'll be joining her very soon. At his office David sees this women in black outside in the street watching him, the same woman that was supposed to have paid for his headstone, all hours of the day. The man completely freaks out when later there's an inscription carved on his headstone born. June 14, 1931 and died. October 25, 1977 which is just a few days hence!

Going to the cemetery and digging up Dominique's coffin with his faithful limo-driver Tony Calvert, Simon Ward, both David and Tony are shocked to find the coffin empty! Is Dominique dead or is she really alive? Later having Dominique officially exhumed it's found to the shock of David and Tony that her body is really there! what did Dominique do? go back in her grave after David and Tony dug it up? David gets so crazy that he starts to accuse his housemaid old Mrs. Davis, Flora Robson, of being behind all these ghostly incidents that's appearing to him which makes her leave the mansion in both fear and disgust.

With Dominique popping up every night and spooking him has David empty a fully loaded handgun on her only to find, later with Tony,that the bullets not only went through her but ended up embedded in the walls and door of the house! Now totally insane David is driven to the edge of a balcony of his house and falls to his death in the greenhouse; the very place where Dominique's body was found on the early morning of October 25, 1977! the date of his death inscribed on his tombstone.

With Dominique's last Will & Testament read by her lawyer at the end of the movie we get an idea to who was behind this scam to drive David to his death like he did to Dominique. We have to sit through another ten minutes or so for the culprits to reveal themselves and at the same time fall out by double-crossing each other.

Overlong and at times boring "Dominique is Dead" should have ended some ten minutes earlier leaving the audience up in the air to what really was behind all the strange and unexplained happening in the movie. By awkwardly trying to explain them, very unconvincingly, away the film muddled the plot even more and just self-destructed like the tape-recorder in the TV series "Mission Impossible".

It begins with a well to do couple (Robertson and Simmons) at their home in Britain. Through the first portion of the film, you see that the wife seems to be having some memory lapses and might be headed for a nervous breakdown. However, you are unsure if what is really happening or if, perhaps, the husband is orchestrating it—like in the movie "Gaslight". In fact, for quite a while, I thought the film was a remake of this story. However, unlike "Gaslight", the wife kills herself and you realize this cannot be that classic film's plot. From here on, the husband suddenly begins experiencing many of the same manifestations that the wife experienced—and he, too, might slowly be going mad. What's next?

This film is a great example of a movie that is simply over-written. In other words, there are too many plot elements and twists. Because of this, the plot to drive the couple mad is overly complicated and presents MANY opportunities to establish that an outside person or persons are manipulating them. The plot depended too many times on the people reacting one way and if they'd reacted another (which was very plausible) the plan would have quickly come unraveled. As a result, there were several obvious plot holes that kept me second-guessing the writer. Additionally, at the end, there is a murder that simply made little sense. Add to that the amazingly over-restrained performances by everyone (especially Robertson) and you get a movie that should have been excellent but in actuality was only a time-passer. Not terrible but simplicity would have made this one so much better.