One Minute Before Death

The plot is AWESOME with that Gothic Haunted House vibe if the 70's that made that era of movies so good. The acting however was atrocious. How many people noticed that the portrait changed a few times from one woman to another? What could have been such a good movie of the 1970's turned out to be just another one of those leaving you saying WHY??

The Oval Portrait is based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's story is one of his shortest only two pages long. So to create a film that is around 1 1/2 hours long must have been a difficult task but it was done with this film - and beautifully I must add.

This is a film that has escaped me for years. I acquired a copy of this one from the Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack and I am pleased this film was added to the collection.

Overall this is a good film - especially if you are interested in movies that are based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I was not disappointed with this film adaptation.

7/10

While staying in an old house to hear the reading of a will, a woman becomes haunted by the spirit of the deceased girl whose room she is occupying. The kindly housekeeper advises her to leave the house quickly, and supports this warning with what is possibly the longest expository flashback sequence in film history.

This fly-ball ghost story is mostly a woebegone romance set during and shortly after the U. S. Civil War. Stir in some soap-suds melodrama and a fat pinch of horse-and-buggy chills of the "old dark house" variety, and there you have The Colonel's secret recipe for one peculiar little movie. It's a noticeably insouciant project filmed almost entirely within a neo-Victorian styled house, and features some laughably unconvincing period wardrobe and wigs. That said, it's a modestly watchable item which transcends slightly the usual expectations held for underprivileged cinema. The has-been female leads(Hendrix and Mackenzie) are commendable, if a bit outmoded in their old-school Hollywood histrionics, but come-off nearly Oscar-worthy in comparison to their less-distinguished support players. Truth is, there's actually little to gripe about where the rudiments of production are concerned...it's adequately overseen for the most part. It does suffer from directorial lassitude and yo-yo pacing, however, and the dearth of gratuitous sensationalism renders it a rather prudent entry to the delectus of horror cinema.

4.5/10...not exactly "bucket list" material.

Short overview first: This is a film that starts off strong and creepy, bogs down in the middle for a long time, then picks up a bit at the end. If you've read elsewhere that the pacing in this film is a little off, then you've read right. That said, it is in no way a bad film and worth a watch at least, especially if you're into those Gothic style Haunted House films that were all the rage back then.

An old Major has died, and his family are turning up at his house for the will reading (I think). His niece immediately gets the creeps and starts seeing the spectre of a young girl around the place, and is also creeped out by the Oval Portrait of a lady on the wall. The niece starts wearing some old clothes she found in a cupboard which freaks out some guy called Joseph, and the housekeeper then goes into the backstory, which takes up the entire middle portion of the film! But not before the niece is possessed by the spirit inhabiting the portrait on the wall…

The backstory concerns the girl in the portrait, the guy called Joseph, and the major, and is more of a civil war era costume drama/romance than a horror film. That said, even my wife, who has no patience for these sorts of b-movies and would rather have some semblance of a real life, did enjoy the film for what it was.

How many horror movies have you seen where you whined about the poor, dark, murky cinematography?

Well here, every scene is brightly lit for you to see in all it's horrific glory.

That's what sucks. There's so much subtext, but the photography killed all nuance.

Not that this thing would have been a gem otherwise, but how many movies can you name that are ruined by its photography? Yep, this is the only one that I can think of.

Ever.