THE VANISHING. (1993) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE VANISHING. (1993) DIRECTED BY GEORGE SLUIZER. BASED ON THE NOVELLA, THE GOLDEN EGG (HET GOUDEN EI) BY TIM KRABBE AND ON THE 1988 DUTCH FILM, THE VANISHING, OR SPOORLOOS (WITHOUT A TRACE).

STARRING KIEFER SUTHERLAND, SANDRA BULLOCK, JEFF BRIDGES, NANCY TRAVIS AND PARK OVERALL.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I’ve always loved this strange, disturbing film, and it’s only today, as I’m researching it, that I’m finding out that, A, it’s a re-make of a much more popular 1988 film of the same name, and, B, it’s considered to be one of the worst re-makes ever made.

Well, that sure told me, didn’t it? George Sluizer, a Dutch-Jewish film-maker, now deceased, made both films, although why he made the second one only five years after the original, I’m not sure, unless it was to have both the Dutch and English versions out there. Elementary, my dear Watson…

I’ll concentrate on the later version here, as it’s the only one I’ve seen. Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock play attractive young American couple, Jeff and Diane (A little ditty, ‘bout Jeff and Diane, two ‘Merican kids doing the best they can…!). Okay, yes, I know that it’s meant to be a song ‘bout Jack and Diane, and not Jeff and Diane, I just had a brief moment of levity, is all. So sue me, John Cougar Mellencamp, lol.

Anyway, Jeff and Diane are really annoying together. Jeff is a bit of an insensitive prick, and Diane the kind of woman who has a panic attack if Jeff leaves her alone for two minutes to go to the bathroom.

She’s clingy and emotionally controlling, making Jeff give her endless promises and reassurances that he’ll never leave her. Well, of course we know men just love that kind of thing. They can’t get enough of extreme neediness in a bird. How Jeff doesn’t leave her ass in the tunnel where their car breaks down is some kind of miracle.

Jeff and Diane are on their way back home from a less-than-successful driving holiday when Diane vanishes into thin air after paying a quick visit to a gas station convenience store. For three long years, Jeff obsesses about the disappearance night and day, posting fliers featuring Diane’s mugshot all over the place and appearing on television and talk radio shows.

He even acquires a new girlfriend, Rita the waitress (freshen your drink, sugar…?), she of the fabulous curly hair-do and the determination to make Jeff, a complete stranger who wanders randomly into the diner where she works, into the Perfect Boyfriend for herself.

Perfect in every way, except, of course, for the all-consuming obsession with his missing girlfriend. But there’s no underestimating the ruthlessness of a diner waitress in the matter of love. She’s onto a good thing here, is Rita.

Living with would-be writer Jeff beats the hell out of serving hash browns and eggs over-easy to auld lads who think her body comes with the price of the check. (Pandering by using ‘Merican spelling.) Rita won’t give up on Jeff. But will Jeff give up on Diane? Not bloody likely.

I don’t even think that it’s a matter of Jeff’s being in love with Diane any more, like poor Nancy fears. After all, he’s now got Nancy to tickle his fancy, innit? I honestly think it’s more the case that his male pride is hurt by having had his girlfriend swiped from him, right out from under his nose, and now he just wants to find out for certain what happened to Diane.

He needs to know. He needs closure. He needs the answer to the question, what happened to her, almost as much as he needs air to breathe, and not even the feisty Nancy can change his stubborn mind. Enter the villain of the piece, Jeff Bridges as the weird and shambling University chemistry professor, Barney Cousins…

This is the only film of Jeff Bridges’ in which I don’t fancy him. I loved him in films like JAGGED EDGE and THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS. Here, he has a horribly unflattering hairstyle and a funny accent, which I’ve only just worked out is probably meant to be Dutch, given the earlier version of the film and the Dutch director George Sluizer.

Barney is creepy. The scenes where he’s in his car, rehearsing how to abduct a defenceless female, would certainly give you the willies. Barney is super-intellectual and detached and curious about things. You could imagine him staring impassively, with scientific objectivity and no compassion, at an animal or a human being in pain or distress.

Jeff, on the other hand, is impetuous, hot-headed and inclined to punch first, ask questions later. Who will win in their battle of wits? Will intellect win out over stubbornness and tenacity, or will a bunch of fives annihilate intellect every time…? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out, folks.

I love the scenes where the feisty Nancy squares up to the evil Barney, and also the fact that her co-waitress and partner-in-crime is played by Park Overall, who once co-starred in a great old ‘Eighties sitcom called EMPTY NEST with Dinah Manoff, Kristy McNichol and David Leisure. She herself portrayed a nurse called Laverne. Her heavy Southern accent and no-nonsense personality is kind of her trademark.

Enjoy the movie anyway, folks, whichever version you see. And steer clear of anyone called Barney, as they are clearly bonkers. Exceptions include the big purple dinosaur on kiddies’ TV, the character from THE FLINTSTONES and Barney, the resident drunk in THE SIMPSONS.

This list is subject to change, just as soon as I can think of any more Barneys. Hey, wasn’t there a posh New York department store called BARNEYS in FRIENDS where Jennifer Aniston’s character Rachel Greene used to shop? I’ll look into it. Over and out…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

YOU GET ME. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

YOU GET ME. (2017) DIRECTED BY BRENT BONACORSO. STARRING BELLA THORNE, HALSTON SAGE AND TAYLOR JOHN SMITH.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I absolutely loved this Netflix romantic thriller, even though most of its reviews seem to be negative. Don’t believe everything the critics tell you, though. Sometimes critics are film snobs and turn their noses up at things they think are beneath them.

I think this film is a perfectly acceptable addition to the canon of steamy why-won’t-she-leave-me-alone-is-she-fucking-mad-or-what thrillers. It’s like FATAL ATTRACTION or PLAY MISTY FOR ME for teens, or SWIMFAN, which is already aimed at high school kids. These films all conform to a certain formula. I don’t mind this at all, as I love the formula.

Hot guy breaks up with girl or is separated from her somehow for a night or two. Guy meets mysterious sexy hot new girl and has sex with her. Guy comes to his senses next morning and tells girl, thanks for the sex but I must be going now. Back he goes to regular girlfriend, who welcomes him back with open arms… and legs.

But guess who turns up unexpectedly (seriously though, the only one not expecting to see her again is the stupid Hot Guy!) and refuses to let Hot Guy go? That’s right. Mysterious hot new girl. And now she’s obsessed with Hot Guy and keeps showing up everywhere he goes. Hot Guy is at his wit’s end. He’s gonna have to confess to regular girlfriend What He Did Last Summer, etc.

This is exactly what happens in YOU GET ME. Tyler is the hot beach bum blonde surf god who dumps his girlfriend Alison at a party when he finds out that she’s put out for other guys but is making him wait for sex with her. Her prerogative, I would have thought…!

A hot girl called Holly, a new girl in town, is only too happy to take poor lonely Tyler home to her step-mother’s magnificent (but soulless!) all-white beach house. Or beach mansion, I should say. They have wild, uninhibited beach house sex, and the next day Tyler barely knows which end is up.

He says ta-ra, love, to Holly and gets back with Alison immediately. But imagine his horror when Holly turns up at his school as the new girl, and immediately starts inveigling herself into his and Alison’s- and their friends’- lives...

Everyone else, including Alison, loves Holly, she’s such fun! But Tyler knows something isn’t right. Just what is Holly planning, and exactly how far is she prepared to go with her campaign of terror against Tyler…? It’s fantastic stuff. If you’re in any way like me, you’ll lap it up off the shag-pile with a bendy straw.

FATAL AFFAIR (2020) is another Netflix erotic thriller I was watching recently. It has exactly the same plot as YOU GET ME, except for one or two points. The white dopey school-age teens have been replaced with affluent black adults, in particular Ellie and Marcus Warren and their college-age daughter, Brittany.

The big twist here is that it’s the man, an old acquaintance of Ellie’s called David Hammond, who’s doing the stalking this time, which makes an interesting change. He sees Ellie again after a number of years, clocks how hot, sexy and together she is and says to himself, that’s nice, yeah, baby, I’ll have me a piece of that.

But Ellie is not just going to let her life be ruined by David, a man with secrets and a dark past that would surely be of interest to any woman planning to date him and unknowingly take him under false pretences to a lunch at Ellie and Marcus’s beach house, ie, Ellie’s best friend, Courtney. Let’s hope Courtney has the nouse to emerge unscathed…

I don’t know why so many quite good directors feel the need to give their films such terrible bland titles. Don’t they want their films to stand out, or what? Just look at these titles, every one a FATAL ATTRACTION rip-off. Would you believe, I have every single one of these films on DVD? I have a good eye for these little gems.

1.    FATAL AFFAIR.
2.    FATAL INSTINCT.
3.    BASICALLY AN INSTINCTIVE AFFAIR.
4.    FATALLY OBSESSED.
5.    A FATAL OBSESSION.
6.    OBSESSIVELY FATAL.
7.    OBSESSIVELY FATAL AFFAIR.
8.    A BASIC AFFAIR; that is, no frills!
9.    BASICALLY, D’YOU WANNA HAVE AN AFFAIR OR WHAT?
10.  DANGEROUS LIES.
11.  DANGEROUS AFFAIR.
12.  DANGEROUS INSTINCTS.
13.  INSTINCTIVELY DANGEROUS AFFAIR.
14.  DANGEROUS ATTRACTION.
15.  TELL ME LIES.
16.  DON’T TELL ME LIES, I WAS PISSED WHEN I SAID THAT.
17.  WHAT A SIMPLY SPLENDID AFFAIR!
18.  SINGLE WHITE STALKER.
19.  FATALLY STALKED.
20.  FATAL FATALITIES.
21.  OBSESSIVELY STALKED.
22.  OBSESSIVE STALKER.
23.  DANGEROUS STALKER.
24.  JOHN STALKER: THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. (How the Charles Dickens did this one sneak in here?)
25.  FATALLY BASIC INFIDELITY.
26.  BASICALLY FATAL INFIDELITY.
27.  DANGEROUS INFIDELITY.
28.  PLAY FATAL ATTRACTION FOR ME.
29.  PLAY FATAL OBSESSION FOR ME.
30.  CHEAT AND YOU FUCKIN’ DIE.
31.  CHEATING FUCKERS MUST DIE.
32.  CHEATING FUCKERS ALWAYS DIE.
33.  FATALLY UNFAITHFUL.
34.  BASICALLY UNFAITHFUL.
35.  DANGEROUSLY UNFAITHFUL.
36.  YOURS UNFAITHFULLY.
37.  UNFAITHFULLY YOURS.
38.  FATALLY LOVED.
39.  DANGEROUS LOVE.
40.  BASICALLY, AN INSTINCTIVE KIND OF LOVE.
41.  UNFAITHFUL LOVE.
42.  ADULTEROUS LOVE.
43.  FATAL KISSES.
44.  FATALLY KISSED.
45.  UNFAITHFUL KISSES.
46.  ADULTEROUS KISSES.
47.  INSTINCTIVE KISSES.
48.  DANGEROUS KISSES.
49.  A LOVER KISSED.
50.  DID YOU JUST KISS HER, YOU CHEATING FUCKER?

Hey, we made it to fifty, go, us! You can see what I mean, though, can’t you? ‘Tis desperate altogether. It’s almost as if someone says of the title of the movie, ‘nah, that’s too good, too original, we don’t want to lose the run of ourselves. We’re not trying to stand out here. Let’s make it a little more generic, shall we? Make the film a little harder to find online and in general.

‘Stick the word fatal in there somewhere? Maybe affair as well? That’s an idea. What about FATAL AFFAIR? Hey, looks like we’ve hit the jackpot with this one. Everyone in favour, raise your hands. Looks like a full house to me. Now, onto more important things. Chinese or Indian for the take-out…? Warren, you’re elected, buddy! Don’t you be fucking up my order like you did last time.’

Ah, you get the gist. I loved YOU GET ME, and FATAL AFFAIR was good too. Check them both out on Netflix, but not the way you’d check a library book out of the library. It doesn’t work like that. I know. I’ve tried it. Over and out.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv
 

COMING HOME IN THE DARK. (2021) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

COMING HOME IN THE DARK. (2021) BASED ON THE 1995 SHORT STORY OF THE SAME NAME BY OWEN MARSHALL. DIRECTED BY JAMES ASHCROFT.
STARRING MIRIAMA MCDOWELL, ERIK THOMSON, DANIEL GILLIES AND MATTHIAS LUAFUTU.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This psychological thriller from New Zealand is well worth your time, I promise you. I was gripped by it the whole way through. It’s about a family of four, schoolteachers Jill and Alan and their two teenaged sons, Maika and Jordan. They drive out into the depths of the New Zealand countryside to get away from the rat-race for a few days.

I’m guessing the little holiday is the mum Jill’s idea, as she’s the one who’s gathering up all the phones and other devices and shoving them in the glove compartment so that the members of her little family can actually talk to each other for a change. It’s a common complaint nowadays.

Too many gadgets are killing the art of conversation. How many times have you gone out for dinner and sat beside a couple who spent the whole night on their phones while basically ignoring one another? Or seen a group of four or five friends walking down the road side by side, all bound for the one destination, but each glued to their phones? Or asked for directions from a person who pulled out their earphones with an eyeroll and exaggerated sigh because they’re so annoyed at being disturbed while listening to their music? Exactly. But this is a debate for another day. Don’t get me started, lol.

The family stop for a rest in the most isolated spot imaginable. This is where they are ambushed by two shotgun-wielding lowlifes who have been watching them from higher up in the hills. Tubs is quiet, thin and hungry-looking, and you can tell he’s had a hard life by his face. Mandrake is another kettle of fish, a horse of a different colour altogether.

He’s a complete effing psychopath, is what he is. He’s a smart arse who likes the sound of his own voice. He always has to be showing off how cool and tough he is, and he’s the dominant partner by far in this little crime duo. Poor Tubs has clearly been influenced by his big-mouthed lout of a so-called friend. There might be a chance for him in life if he could get out from under Mandrake’s domination of him. Or maybe it’s too late. Old habits die hard, after all.

Mandrake sports a bizarre hipster moustache and a long overcoat with big boots, he likes to taunt, tease and torment verbally as well as physically and, basically speaking, he should be locked away for the rest of his life for what he does to this little family. We can only imagine what crimes he’s committed prior to meeting Alan and Jill.

Alan is a mild-mannered, weak man who tends to let things happen around him. He’s immediately submissive to the gunmen for fear that, if they antagonise them, things could always get worse. He begs his much ballsier missus, Jill, a ferocious tigress of a mother to her two boys, not to provoke them. Alan’s policy is to keep his head down and hope that things somehow turn out for the best.

There’s a lot to be said for caution and the softly, softly approach, but, when Alan persists with it even after the two thugs commit an act of unimaginable violence and brutality, we might start to wonder what kind of a man is he exactly, and were there other times in his past when he might have stood by and let atrocities happen in front of his very eyes because the path of least resistance felt the safest…?

You can take it from me that there were times like that for Alan, and you can be sure too that Mandrake will wrench them out of him like some kind of mad dentist from hell armed with a rusty drill. It’s painful and shockingly violent to watch, and an agonised Jill in particular has to face up to the fact that, not only is her weak-willed husband not the man she thought he was when she married him, but it’s taken an abduction by a couple of murderous goons to bring the truth out, piece by troubled piece.

This is a top-notch horror film, with some fabulous scenery to enjoy in the beginning. The four leads, particularly Miriama McDowell as Jill, are super-successful at each playing one quarter of the mainly four-handed cast. The script is tight and believable (it COULD happen to you) and there’s a moral and a message in there too; sometimes people are what we as a society turn them in to. Make of that what you will, and enjoy the film.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

THE CRUSH. (1993) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE CRUSH. (1993) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ALAN SHAPIRO. STARRING CARY ELWES, KURTWOOD SMITH, GWYNYTH WALSH, JENNIFER RUBIN AND ALICIA SILVERSTONE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

It’s a bit disturbing to read that the writer and director of this ‘90s erotic thriller based his movie on a real-life experience of his own with a girl who later sued him for using her real name in the film. One wonders what the ‘woke’ battalion and the #metoo movement would make of it all.

Cary Elwes’s character in the film, a journalist called Nick Eliot, finds himself in a whole heap of trouble when he rents a rich couple’s guest-house and falls afoul of their beautiful young teenage daughter, as prime a piece of jail-bait as Nick has ever seen. Her name is Adrian Forrester, although she’d be better named Lolita…

I hope I’m not doing Alicia Silverstone (known for starring in CLUELESS, and in those three famous Aerosmith music videos from the early ‘90s, CRYIN’, AMAZING and CRAZY), who plays the fourteen-year-old Adrian, any disservice here by saying that she’s perfect for this role, her movie debut. Sexually precocious, flirtatious, seductive, fully aware of the effect she has on men and determined to get what she wants, by fair means or foul.

Nick is undeniably attracted to the gorgeous teenager, who’s apparently a child prodigy in various subjects as well as a smouldering Bardot-esque-type beauty. She reads WUTHERING HEIGHTS and Jane Austen, by choice, she’s a mini-Mozart on the ivories, she’s a keen entomologist, that is, an expert on insects, and a champion horse-rider and a talented writer to boot. Talk about the girl who has it all…! Just think about what she could achieve if she got her mind off men for a minute…

 Adrian makes it clear from the start that she’s smitten with the handsome twenty-eight-year-old reporter, and Nick is flattered, not altogether surprisingly. It’s not until the pair actually kiss, on the night of her parents’ party, that the scales seem to fall from Nick’s eyes and he finally realises what trouble he could be in if he pursues a sexual relationship with Adrian. Beautiful and sexually aware she may be, but she’s still only a child, and the adult in the situation must be the one to do the right thing.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, however, and Adrian turns extremely nasty when Nick tells her they can’t be together the way she wants. He’ll always be her friend, though, he promises her, and she can always count on him to be there for her if she needs him. One wonders if he would be so free with his avowals of undying friendship if she’d been acne-scarred and wearing braces on her teeth…

It’s not Nick’s friendship that Adrian wants, however. Now that she’s been rejected, everything of value in Nick’s life is under severe threat. His glittering new career at PIQUE magazine, his difficult boss’s high opinion of him, his (adult!) girlfriend Amy, a photographer from the same magazine, his beloved vintage car, which he’s lovingly restoring, and his own good reputation as a man who doesn’t rape and beat little girls. Yeah, things get really black there for Nick for a while. Will he ever see the light at the end of the tunnel again…?

It’s a bit far-fetched that Adrian manages to do all the things she does in the film without anyone suspecting her. She’s only a teenage girl, after all, and not Superman, but it’s an entertaining and gripping film, so we can probably excuse a few- well, a whole truckload of- loopholes.

The two leads are extremely good-looking, as I’m sure they both know (Carey Elwes is known for his roles in THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the SAW franchise), and the premise of the film is infinitely believable. Just look at FATAL ATTRACTION, SWIMFAN or PLAY MISTY FOR ME,  each of which have similar themes of rejection and a terrible revenge for same.

There’s a lotta trouble out there a guy can get himself into, if he messes with the feelings of the wrong woman. You’d think that would make men more careful, wouldn’t you, but no. Guys never learn, seemingly, and they will never stop being attracted to nubile underage females with unblemished bodies. One can’t blame them for that, for basic human biology; it’s what they choose to do about it that matters…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234


 

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR, BY SHARI LAPENA. (2016) BOOK REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR. (2016) WRITTEN BY SHARI LAPENA. PUBLISHED BY TRANSWORLD.

BOOK REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a pretty damn good effort for a debut thriller, lol. Mind you, the lady was a lawyer and an English teacher before she started writing fiction, so she probably had a good hefty head start on most writers.

This is the story of an American marriage that was possibly shaky to begin with, but on the night that the story kicks off, something happens that puts the marriage under more strain than it was ever intended to withstand.

Marco Conti and his wife Anne’s baby daughter Cora is kidnapped on a night when, to their eternal shame, they’ve left her alone to attend a dinner party with the couple next door.

True, they’ve brought the baby monitor with them (audio only, no visuals; someone clearly screwed up there) and they’re taking it in turns to pop back and forth to the house to check on her every half hour, but still, what kind of parent does that…?

The awful thing (well, next to Cora’s being kidnapped, of course!) is that Anne doesn’t even want to be at the neighbours’ cruddy dinner party in the first place. The husband, Graham, is a nonentity who doesn’t utter a syllable throughout the book, and the wife, horny sexpot Cynthia Stillwell, spends the whole evening flirting her ass off with Marco who, somewhat understandably, is flattered and responds in kind to her attentions.

After all, Anne is taking antidepressants for her post-natal depression, she’s down in the dumps all the time, she feels ‘fat and unattractive’ compared to the trashy Cynthia and she’s probably experienced an almost total loss of libido after the birth of her baby as well.

Who could blame Marco for responding to Sexy Cynthia’s brazen advances, her blatant invitation to kiss and have a bit of an old grope and a feel out on the back patio while Anne is at home giving Cora her last breast-feed of the night? He probably hasn’t had sex in months, the poor love. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, lol. The prick.

Anyway, when the couple eventually arrive home from the horrible dinner party, both tipsy and frustrated, albeit in different ways, their baby girl Cora is gone from her cot. Anne immediately begins to blame Marco, as he was the one who persuaded her that Cora would be just fine without a babysitter just this once. Oh, he was, was he…? Marco’s looking better and better as a husband by the minute, isn’t he?

Enter the taciturn Detective Rasbach, so taciturn, in fact, that we never find out anything at all about his personal life, like whether his wife divorced him because he was never at home and was married to the job, or if he’s a weekend dad and his kids are all screwed up because their dad always put his work before his family, stuff like that.

In any case, it’s this Detective Rasbach’s job to unravel this complicated case and try to find out what’s happened to poor little Cora Conti. Was she taken by an opportunist, who just happened to be passing by on the one night that Cora was home alone? Unlikely, but not impossible.

Was it a kidnapping for ransom, as Anne’s parents Alice and Richard are filthy, and I do mean filthy, rich? Or, more likely in Rasbach’s hard-bitten detective’s mind, have either of her parents done away with Baby Cora for some reason and staged a phoney kidnapping to cover up their nefarious actions?

It’s often the parents in cases like this, just as, when a woman goes missing or is murdered, the first port of call for the police is usually the husband or boyfriend. It’s nothing to do with police discrimination; it’s simply that the solution to cases like this is frequently found close to home.

After all, Anne has post-natal depression and a strange history of violent actions dating back to her school days, and Marco’s software business is in terrible financial trouble. Their marriage seems like it was rocky even before the taking of Baby Cora, and relations between them since the kidnapping have reached rock-bottom.

I’m getting back into reading psychological thrillers like this one (they call them, I believe, domestic noir), provided that they’re written by women and contain only the minimum of police intrusion and guns, etc.

I like good, tightly-written domestic plots like this one, about bad marriages, unfaithful husbands (or wives) with seedy, sleazy sexual perversions and women struggling to balance motherhood with marriage and with work outside the home, a difficult (t)ask even in so-called ‘ideal’ circumstances.

I’m very much looking forward to reading whatever Shari Lapena does next. THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR is right up my street, but I’m kind of glad the Contis and the Stillwells don’t inhabit my street too. They wouldn’t make for very good neighbours, and I certainly wouldn’t ask them to babysit my young ‘uns…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S ‘DUEL.’ (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

DUEL. (1971) BASED ON A STORY BY RICHARD MATHESON. DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG. STARRING DENNIS WEAVER, LUCILLE BENSON, EDDIE FIRESTONE AND CAREY LOFTIN.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This fantastic little thriller is every bit as much a horror movie as the famous director’s later blockbuster film, JAWS, in which a monstrous killer shark is literally stalking the waters off the island of Amity, a popular tourist destination, and its destruction is left to one man.

If you’ve seen photos of a ridiculously young and handsome Steven Spielberg during the making of DUEL, you’ll have seen that he looks like a moody director of French New Wave movies in which marriages fail and complex relationships become ever more entwined, lol. So moody, so handsome, and all before he’d filmed so much as a single reel of film featuring a velociraptor with a mind of its own. (‘Clever girl…!’)

DUEL, Steven Spielberg’s debut film, is the deceptively simple story of an ordinary man, anonymously called Dave Mann, a salesman who is travelling down the highway in his car one sunny day to meet with a prospective client before the client jumps in a plane and flies away out of reach.

We see Mann driving out of his garage, we hear the mindless chatter of the chat shows on the car radio as he drives along and we see the city traffic thinning out as Mann reaches those long stretches of isolated out-of-town American highway where the long arm of the law seems conspicuous by its absence, and where, therefore, all kinds of lawlessness can be tolerated.

It happens slowly at first. A monster truck, like one of the trucks from Stephen King’s MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, gradually intrudes itself on Mann’s consciousness. First it’s behind him, tailgating him to the point of being uncomfortable, then it’s ahead of him but moving aggravatingly slowly. ‘I’ve given you the highway, Jack, why don’t you take it…?’

Mann eventually realises that the anonymous truck driver, of whom we only see glimpses- an arm out the window, usually, or a sighting of a pair of cowboy boots- has actual harmful intentions towards him. The driver waves him on ahead at one point, to Mann’s relief, and Mann takes him up on his offer, only to drive straight out into the path of an oncoming vehicle. From this point onwards, a state of war exists between Mann and the truck driver.

Mann’s emotions range from triumphant elation when he wins a schoolboyish victory over the truck driver to absolute blind terror when he sees that the truck driver wants him dead, and seemingly has no problem with destroying other people’s property or maybe even lives in order to do it.

The psychological tension is ramped ever upwards as Mann desperately tries to explain his predicament to the few people he meets on the highway, but no-one believes him. They all think he’s the crazy one; for example, when the truck driver actually helps the broken-down school bus, whereas Mann just comes across to the school bus driver as someone who has a bit of a screw loose. It’s so unfair, but poor Mann just can’t seem to catch a break.

I love the scene at the diner, where we’re absolutely convinced that we’ve met the real truck driver having his lunch, but then it turns out not to be him. The scene at the roadside petrol station and snake farm after the truck driver has cut a murderous swathe through it all is chaotically spellbinding. Poor Mr. Mann with a tarantula on his trouser leg…! Talk about things can always get worse…

The viewers know by now that they are witnessing a fight to the death. Even Mann probably knows this by now, just like Chief Brody in JAWS is more than likely aware too that either he’s going to kill that massive, man-eating shark or the shark is going to kill him. There can be no other in-betweeny endings. Kill or be killed, that’s how primeval and elemental these two life-or-death struggles are. Mann is Brody and Brody is Mann. God help that truck-driving shark, that’s all I can say…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

CRUCIBLE OF HORROR. (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

CRUCIBLE OF HORROR. (1971) DIRECTED BY VIKTORS RITELIS. STARRING MICHAEL GOUGH, SIMON GOUGH, JANE GURNEY AND YVONNE MITCHELL.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This psychological horror-thriller, also known as THE CORPSE and THE VELVET HOUSE, is a really dark film, and the darkest starring role Hammer actor Michael Gough (DRACULA, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) probably ever had. He plays Walter Eastwood, a wealthy middle-aged financier who’s the very model of a prim and proper English businessman of the period.

He discusses stocks and shares and reads the financial news over breakfast with his son Rupert, who works alongside him in the family insurance firm. He likes listening to classical music and going hunting with his posh friends. He loves his guns. ‘Who touched my guns?’ His accent is pure cut-glass British toff and his behaviour, I am sure, is circumspect in every particular but one.

To his terrorised wife Edith, an artist, and his beautiful teenage daughter Jane, he is a monster. He controls their every move and watches them like a hawk, even going so far as to read their mail right in front of them. He controls the purse-strings too and gives Jane no pocket money whatsoever, which assures that her friends tire of her quickly as she never has any money of her own to pay her way.

Worse than this, however, he abuses Edith and Jane physically in the most savage of ways, whipping them with his riding crop when they fail to measure up to his exacting standards, which seems to be often.

Early on in the film, he whips Jane brutally for stealing the kitty from his precious golf-club, which she probably only pinched in the first place because he never gives her any money of her own to hang out with her friends, of whom he naturally disapproves anyway. What’s she meant to do?

Jane is a real looker and Walter’s whipping of her in her bedroom definitely seems to have a strong sexualised element to it. Even if he hasn’t raped her or misused her sexually before, he certainly seems obsessed with her and gets enjoyment from chastising her physically.

It will transpire later in the film that Edith, who seems so brutalised from her husband’s ill-treatment that she has become languid, vague and spaced-out (she will almost certainly be taking prescription sleeping pills and/or tranquilisers), has given the works of the Marquis de Sade to Jane to read. In order, presumably, to make Jane understand why her father behaves towards her the way he does.

Both women seem to have him pegged pretty much correctly as a sexual sadist. If I were Jane, I’d keep my bedroom door permanently locked, although it doesn’t seem like Walter Eastwood is the kind of man to permit his women-folk to lock him out in his own house. He thinks nothing of barging in when Jane is only half-dressed, either, although maybe that’s exactly the state of deshabillé he’s hoping to find her in.

No support whatsoever is forthcoming from Rupert, Edith’s son and Jane’s big brother. He seems to enjoy witnessing his father’s savage sarcasm and controlling behaviour towards Edith and Jane, and one wonders whether he will take his father’s place as the dominant male figure in the family when his father grows too old- or too dead- to do it.

The morning after the golf club money whipping, when poor Jane is barely able to walk from the severity of the injuries inflicted upon her, Mum whispers to her daughter once the men have taken leave of the breakfast table: ‘Let’s kill him.’ It’s the only way they can both be free of Walter and his psychological, financial and physical cruelty…

This bit reminds me of when Mandy and Beth Jordache in Scouser soap opera BROOKSIDE murdered Trevor Jordache in the soap in the early 1990s. Trevor, Mandy’s husband and Beth’s father, had inflicted years of brutal physical and mental abuse- and also the sexual abuse of his daughter Beth- on his little family and they were quite simply driven to the edge of despair by it.

It’s a long time ago now since this happened and even BROOKSIDE itself is now sadly defunct, but I think that Mandy and Beth decided to kill Trevor when he started sexually abusing Rachel, Beth’s younger sister. It was a bridge too far for the two women.

Either way, THE BODY UNDER THE PATIO was one of the most exciting and dramatic storylines ever attempted by a British soap opera and the part of Trevor Jordan was brilliantly played by Irish actor Bryan Murray.

I met Bryan Murray on the LUAS (our Dublin trains!) a few months ago and we had a nice chat about BROOKSIDE and he signed an autograph for me in the book I was reading at the time, which was THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY, the 2008 book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Which was nice, as yer man says on THE FAST SHOW…!

Anyway, things get a bit messy and confusing in CRUCIBLE OF HORROR once the decision has been taken by Edith and Jane to put an end once and for all to their terrible sufferings by offing Walter Eastwood, the fountainhead of all their misery. I do love the ending, though, it’s so deliciously black and grim and hopeless!

Rupert Eastwood is played by Michael Gough’s real-life son Simon. What must have been even odder for them both is that Jane is played by Simon Gough’s real-life wife Sharon Gurney. Michael Gough as Walter Eastwood had to pretend to lust after and get turned on by whipping his very own daughter-in-law, in other words…!

There’s a very funny flashback scene which I’m quite certain was added gratuitously by the film-makers, in which a naked, dripping wet Jane is hauled out of a lake and slapped around the place by Walter for skinny-dipping. It’s not funny that Walter’s being violent, but they didn’t have to include a nudie skinny-dipping scene, it’s purely for sexy kicks, lol.

The film is based on an old French movie called LES DIABOLIQUES which, if I describe the plot of same to you guys now, would be a spoiler as to how CRUCIBLE OF HORROR pans out. I haven’t seen LES DIABOLIQUES myself yet but I intend to dig it out. It’s a French psychological thriller from 1955 directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot starring Simone Signoret, by the way.

There’s a feeling of dread throughout CRUCIBLE OF HORROR because of the dreadful quality of life handed down to Edith and Jane by the tyrannical Walter, whom I must say is the worst, most evil movie-father I’ve ever encountered. And that makes him the best in my book, lol.

I would have given the film a different title as I’m not sure to what the titular ‘crucible’ refers (unless it’s the bowl that Jane… No, wait, I’ve said too much!), but that’s only nit-picking. I loved this film. Try and see it if you can at all.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor