Things kick off with an American girl named Suzy (Jessica Harper) making her arrival in Germany to attend a prestigious ballet school. Right away, things seem more than a bit off. Since she arrives late at night, Suzy has a hard time getting anyone to answer the door on this dark and stormy night so off to a hotel she goes. Before she leaves, however, she sees another girl fleeing from the school. That girl heads to a friend's apartment and, during a particularly lengthy and bloody scene, the girl and her friend wind up dead, the former from being stabbed repeatedly and then hanged, the latter from falling glass littering her body. The next day, Suzy returns to the school, winds up moving into the dorm against her will, and strange things start happening all around. The teachers behave strangely, there is a random maggot infestation, and people keep turning up dead.
No sense beating around the bush, here. This movie baffles me, and not in a good way. It had me so confounded, I did something I don't normally do with my Blind Spot films. I watched it twice before writing about it. I was initially supposed to post about it back in October. I did watch it during that month, but couldn't make heads or tails of it. I waited a couple months and watched it again. And I'm sorry guys. This one just doesn't work for me. The plot feels unnecessarily convoluted. It's also derivative as it takes lots of cues from the great Rosemary's Baby. The kill scenes are overly contrived and all paired with a headache inducing score cranked to eleven...thousand. Finally, the leaps in logic this thing takes cannot be made by Superman in a single bound.
None of my issues with the film were helped by the cast. Joan Bennett as school "vice-directress" Madame Blanc is the standout. However, she's not really great, just the best in this group. Unfortunately, most of the screen-time belongs to Jessica Harper in the lead. She's wooden as an oak tree with a harder to detect pulse. I get that the horror genre is not really known for great acting, but she's really bad. Her performance would be right at home in the worst of the Friday the 13th movies.
The saving grace for this film is its visuals. The blood is too bright as it is in lots of 70s movies, but otherwise they look great. Not only is the blood bright red, but often the entire screen is lit red, and sometimes blue or transitioning between the two. this helps to heighten the action. Most of these scenes go on for a lengthy amount of time, especially when compared to today's horror. People take a while to die and make an effort to get away from their assailants. Occasionally, they do so in stupid fashion, but hey at least it looks good. The rest of the film just didn't measure up. One of those things was that score I already mentioned. It kicked in way too loud and droned throughout the otherwise excellent kill scenes. The movie as a whole didn't give me the intense suspense or chill-inducing horror I was told it would. The story is a slow-burner that never actually burns, but keeps throwing things at the wall that don't stick. Somehow, at the same time, the pace moves along too quickly for its own good. It's a mess of a film that has managed to earn cult classic status. I'm glad I've seen it, so I know what I've been missing. However, I probably won't be watching it again.
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