Le souffle de la peur

A beautiful but strange teenage girl is kept isolated by her mother and grandmother. Her long absent father arrives with a new fiancé in tow, and asks for a divorce. It's not long before all sorts of slightly perverted and typically violent seventies shenanigans kick off!

One of the oddest early seventies psycho-thrillers... as Marguerite, Locke is all bug eyes, long hair and mini-dresses as the disturbed teenager, wafting around, talking to a seemingly imagined friend and enduring alarming mood swings. Hasso and Ure (in her last film) are given rather thankless roles as her sinister guardians (and given the apparently Canadian setting - references to Charlottetown, Georgetown - there's no particular explanation for Marguerite having a Swedish grandmother and an Anglo-American mother... and why is the gardener British?). Robert Shaw was a fine actor (and he was married to Ure at the time), but here seems to sleepwalk throughout the movie, despite the slightly incestuous nature of his character, and Kellerman was a curious and strange choice for the 'straight' role of Anne, especially if you consider her other more wacky roles of this period (M*A*S*H, SLITHER, LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS and BREWSTER McCLOUD).

In keeping with a movie-making trend of the period, much is made of Locke's pubescent sexuality (see also BABY LOVE, TWINKY, Sally Tomsett's character in STRAW DOGS), and even with the apparent editing, the murder of at least one character has a grainy, improvised and rather nasty look to it.

Ultimately it doesn't really work, but it's still a fascinating and spooky failure with a striking cast and captivating central performance, all of which leaves it lingering long after the final credits fade.

Weird! This is one of the most bizarre horror flicks I've ever seen. But weird can be good, and in this case, it's definitely good! The beautiful and sexy Sondra Locke is at her very best as the tormented teen. Mary Ure and Signe Hasso are appropriately sinister as Locke's overprotective mother and grandmother. Robert Shaw is the disturbed young girl's estranged father who returns home to announce he's going to marry lovely Sally Kellerman. Naturally, several strange and dastardly deeds occur before this event can take place. The film is by all means an effective suspense story(all right, so it borrowed here and there from PSYCHO), but does have its shortcomings. The movie was very severely cut to avoid an R rating and slide by with a PG. Bad editing makes it all too obvious where the missing footage should be. But, it's still a worthwhile thriller with genuine scares and great acting.

For a really minor film from the 70's, for some reason this one sticks with me - even this long after I saw it at a horror festival in the late 80's. Why? Maybe it's the idea that we all have secret urges and thoughts that could manifest themselves in the world, if we give them a vehicle.

Sondra Locke does a great job of being a too-mousy-for-reality girl who has a BIG secret, of which I'm not sure even SHE'S aware.

Cool ending, as well, with enough still remaining from the cuts for the viewer to get the idea.

Catch this one, if you can. You won't be sorry.

Haunting Gothic psychodrama (adapted by Lewis John Carlino whose THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA covers similarly torrid terrain) which, whilst undeniably owing a shade too much of a debt to PSYCHO (as previously noted by another IMDb commentator), whips up an unsettling and uneasy atmosphere of dread, not all of which is dissipated by apparently heavy censorship cuts made to secure a 'PG' for its original U.S. theatrical release in the early 70s. In fact, these often noticeable edits (scenes cut away before they've barely begun) lends the whole enterprise a greater sense of ambiguity by suggesting, rather than showing, the barely suppressed corruption and perversion. Possibly too low-key for popular tastes (which makes it all the more surprising that this was distributed by a major studio and roped in the likes of Robert Shaw) and, although I don't really go a bundle on films which seem to be bending over backwards to conceal their surprise ending (and, yes, I did see this one coming a mile off), this is still a one-off melodramatic curio worth seeking out and which certainly lingers in the mind. Now, how about a nice DVD transfer (my UK video copy is a nasty full-frame RCA Columbia release from the early 80s which doesn't do justice to what looks like impressive cinematography)?...

Underrated horror-thriller with an interesting cast, led capably by a young Sondra Locke as a reclusive girl, who yearns for the affections of her absent father (Shaw), as she struggles mentally with inner demons and a strained relationship with her mother (Ure) who she blames for her father's estrangement. When Shaw visits with new girlfriend in tow (Kellerman), Locke sets out to impress him with her superior intellect and creativity, but love her as he does, he's unwilling to 'rescue' her from her unhappy existence with her mother. As he prepares to leave again, he's confronted with a series of unexplained events including fatal accidents, murder and twisted sanity.

It's the stuff of nightmares; the haunting score, lighting, and especially Locke's performance contribute to a chilling, suspenseful tale that is at times, graphically violent and gruesome. Shaw delivers another watchable performance as the increasingly concerned father, while Kellerman (aside from being breathtakingly attractive) is equally effective as an innocent bystander and unwilling witness to the unfolding madness.

A first rate cast, professional production values and intelligent dialogue all deliver, but somehow, this minor thriller seems to go perpetually unnoticed. The plot might not be rock solid, and there's undoubtedly some narrative weaknesses, but invest a little time and latitude, and you should be repaid handsomely. Great fright night fare.