The Cold Room

This was a made-for-cable affair, but is/was available on VHS. The main and overriding sense one gets in watching this film is, "Great Scott! Will somebody wake these people up?" Which is another way of saying it is boring and dreary. But more than that, it seems like the whole production is in some sort of funk. Start with George Segal. I'm a fan. He may be remembered to people now as the guy from "Just Shoot Me." But up until the early 80s, the guy was a capital-letters Movie Star, whose main asset was a sense of fun and vigor he brought into the various quirky roles he played. His star was fading when this was made and it is clear why. In THE COLD ROOM, he seems preoccupied, dazed, out of it. Just sad to see a once- vibrant person bring nothing to the table.

But he's not the only one. Pays (Mrs. Corbin Bernson), has little spark to her character. The whole plot involves people in present-day Germany, one of whom discovers a link to a past romance with a character from Germany's Nazi past. It might have helped if Pays (or anyone else) brought a little energy to the set. But since the whole thing is pretty lifeless, directed by the book, scripted with no surprises, etc...the "who cares" factor is high. The movie is inoffensive but seems almost intentionally boring. Like the people who made it wanted it to be quickly forgotten.

Incredibly bleak and almost unwatchable. One of the rules of a good film is to create a world that is accessible. I get the main character's slipping in and out of the current reality. The problem is that things are so bleak in the contemporary that the past seems not so terrible. There is all this angst and anger. I thought to myself, this girl should be sent packing. She is the consummate brat. He father is pleasant to her, but because of the death of her mother, she resents him horribly. That said, he is about as dense as one can be. At one time, he is scolding her for smoking a cigarette; the next he is forgiving of the most outlandish behavior. I know he has no knowledge of the flipping in and out but that's an unfair part of this film as well. It's confusing because the central figure acquires new personalities as she shifts in and out of the past; but why? Isn't she really the same person and if she isn't, how does she keep a grip on reality in each place (an memory for that matter). I don't think I could watch it a second time.

George Segal is the estranged father of a 17 year old girl. She is a troubled youth and is played quite ably Amanda Pays. In an attempt to reconnect with his daughter, Segal takes her from London to East Berlin. She is not happy and quite rude to him but he continues to try and please her. The East Berlin setting makes for empty streets and strange encounters. Why he picks this locale is never explained. It's a grim place. The daughter gets into all sorts of strange physic changes which makes her unbalanced and unpredictable.

Warren Clarke has a marvelous part as a "heavy" which is a far cry from his performance as Detective in "Dalziel and Pascoe" (61 episodes)a

It's worth your time if you really need diversion. There are some real "plot holes" so don't expect a satisfactory ending.

"A British girl is traveling with her estranged father in order to attempt to rebuild their relationship. Shortly after they arrive in East Germany, the girl begins to suffer from strange sensations and mental lapses, where she remembers events from World War II that she could never have experienced herself. Is this a case of mental breakdown, is it possible memories from a past life, or is she dealing with a rip in the fabric of time and she is actually experiencing the events for real?" asks the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

James Dearden's "The Cold Room" opens with the telling definition: "Possession: psychological state in which an individual personality is replaced by another." In this case, possession can also be mind-numbingly dull. When she throws up her milk, you'll know ill-tempered Amanda Pays (as Carla Martin) is becoming Nazi-era rape victim "Christa Bruckner". Her father, George Segal (as Hugh Martin), wants to bridge the generation gap, as Ms. Pays goes mad. Pretty, model-like Pays has some serious father problems. Anthony Higgins (as Erich) has a good supporting role.

*** The Cold Room (1984) James Dearden ~ Amanda Pays, George Segal, Anthony Higgins

This is a somewhat ambitious movie about an adolescent English girl (Amanda Pays) visiting East Germany with her divorced American father (George Segal). The girl (who's kind of an annoying brat to begin with)becomes possessed by the spirit of a previous young female tenant of the house, who during WWII was hiding a Jewish male lover in a "cold room" behind the wall.

People say a lot of bad things about this movie. But considering it was made by the guy that wrote the piece-of-crap script for the piece- of-crap 80's movie "Fatal Attraction", I thought it was OK. It isn't very well-executed, but frankly it's a hell of a lot more ambitious than "Fatal Attraction" (which was basically a crappy re-make of "Play Misty for Me" made to cash in on 80's AIDS hysteria). George Segal is OK as the father. Unfortunately, Amanda Pays, in her first film, is simply not a strong enough actress to do this role very convincingly. (She's a very pretty girl though who later appeared most famously in the Rob Lowe movie "Oxford Blues"). The other actors all seem to be East European, perhaps ones living in Britain or whatever country they actually filmed this in. James Dearden does a pretty bad job of directing this, leaving all kinds of loose ends everywhere. Thank god though he wasn't responsible for the source material (I haven't read the book this was based on, but I'm sure it's far, far better than anything this talentless Hollywood hack could have come up with).

At times this seems almost like a children's movie. But then it also contains scenes like where the possessed protagonist has a fever dream where she experiences her forbear's experience of being raped by her father--and then she falsely tells the East German authorities SHE was raped by her own father! (Luckily a doctor inspects her and it turns out ghosts can't rupture hymens). I think if they took a few scenes like this out, this could be kind of a decent high-school horror companion piece to "The Diary of Ann Frank". As it is, it's a very flawed film, but a kind of interesting one.