I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses

This is a poorly-acted and sloppily-made film based on the infamous Demeter murder case that happened in Mississauga back in 1973. Just a couple of years before, the same filmmaker made Recommendation for Mercy, a fictionalized account of the Steven Truscott case.

This movie takes liberties with some of the facts, but is substantially true to the real facts. Peter Demeter was an immigrant real estate developer that got rich and married a former model. When she was found dead in their garage, he was arrested and, with the help of friends-turned-prosecution witnesses, convicted of either committing or contracting her murder. An award-winning book, By Persons Unknown, written by George Jonas and Barbara Amiel, is an excellent account of the case.

The print that I saw was old and scratchy. It is not a remarkable film in any sense, but it is an interesting take on a small piece of Canadian history.

I MISS YOU, HUGS AND KISSES stars Elke Sommer as fashion model Magdalene Kruschen who is brutally bludgeoned to death in the movie's opening seconds. This may send gorehounds into ecstasy, believing they've hit the jackpot.

Hold your horses!

While the beginning is jarring, it quickly settles into a courtroom drama with Magdalene's husband on trial for her murder. The rest is a series of flashbacks, piecing together what happened to the victim.

This is supposed to be a mystery / thriller, but it's hamstrung by the dull courtroom scenes and a lackadaisical story line. It all feels as though it was put together by accident. Perhaps this is due to it's being based on "true events". However, it just comes off as piecemeal and disjointed.

Within this drab tale are the infamous "dead chickens" and "necrophilia in the park" sequences that jump out unexpectedly, like a crazed jack-in-the-box!

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Ms. Sommer, but this is a dismal abomination!...

Pretty much an ordinary thriller. The only remarkable thing about it is that it was once banned in the UK, i.e. it was one of the infamous nasties. However, it is difficult to see how it would deserve such a distinction -- its goriness is very mild by horror movie standards.

Having now seen seventy three of the seventy four films that were banned as 'Video Nasties' in 1984, I think I'm in a pretty good position to state that the DPP and whoever else was involved in making the list didn't really know what they were doing as many of the films on the list really didn't deserve to be there; and this one is one of the best examples of this fact. The film gets off to a decent start, as we see a woman (played by Elke Sommer) battered to death in a garage. It's not all that gory, but it's an intriguing start that lead me to believe the rest of the film might be at least half decent. It's not, however, as most of the rest of the film is made up of court scenes and flashbacks, and the worst part of is that it's not even interesting. The film was apparently loosely based on a murder case that I'm not familiar with. This is actually quite annoying as film versions of real life events are meant to dramatise them, and I find it hard to believe that the real life murder case wasn't more interesting than this film! Overall, I have no idea why this film was banned, but clearly it's obscure for a reason and if you aren't watching it for the same reason as me, then you really shouldn't be watching! My advice is simply to avoid it...

I discovered 2 years ago he is my great uncle and this movie was made about their story. He is currently serving 5 life sentences in Bath Ontario and is still alive although very bad health from what I have read. Very interesting family story that stem outside of him but certainly this is an out of the ordinary tale that unfortunately affected many. I have not found the connection of his daughter who I suppose is my cousin (from Ishtvan Demeter ((Steven) if she's reading) . Immigrants of Hungary was common to Toronto in the late 70's given the civil war. My gramma opened a small restaurant when she got here and called it little Budapest! Although Peter is a sociopath, I love understanding that history, especially for the mental health aspect.