Back from the Dead

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.

The first and most important thing I want to say is that this movie is directed by a great western specialist for whom it is one of the TWO horror films - with also THE UNKNOWN TERROR - besides westerns, westerns and westerns. So this is maybe not a great horror film, but because and only because it is from this western maker Charles Marquis Warren, I was so curious to see it. And I think that's not bad at all. This kind of intrigue is not my cup of tea at all, I am a bit bored, but let's be fair, there have been far worse in this scheme. It is a small budget and that's even better to work hard on a good script. But this plot would have been better made by a director such as Lewis Allen for instance, for whom it was more his stuff - THE UNINVITED, THE UNSEEN -, more than westerns.

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.

Having lost his first wife, "Felicia" (Peggy Castle) in a tragic drowning accident 6 years earlier, "Dick Anthony" (Don Haggerty) has recently remarried. However, when his new wife, "Mandy Hazelton" (also played by Peggy Castle) suddenly becomes ill and endures a strange seizure, she subsequently becomes possessed by the soul of Felicia. We soon find out that, prior to her death, Felicia began practicing "the dark arts" and, the deeper she got, the more wicked she became. And because she is so evil, both Dick and Mandy's sister "Kate Hazelton" (Marsha Hunt) soon begin looking for a way to bring Mandy back. Unfortunately, it is soon revealed that there are other people who feel differently about this situation--and they will stop at nothing to keep Felicia here. At any rate, rather than disclose any more of the movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, I will just say that this was a decent horror movie which managed to maintain the suspense right up until the end. Likewise, having an actress as stunning as Peggy Castle certainly didn't hurt the film either. In short, don't let the fact that this little-known picture is 57 years old or that it was filmed in black-and-white discourage you from watching it. It's a "diamond in the rough" and I recommend this movie to all of those who might appreciate a film of this nature. Slightly above average.

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.