Starring Martin Landau, Judith Anderson, Diane Baker, Tom Simcox, Nellie Burt
Directed by Joseph Stefano
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
An architect with psychic gifts is hired to investigate phone calls a wealthy man is receiving from his dead mother, and finds there may be connections to one of his previous cases.
According to the Kino Blu-ray's liner notes, this film was originally a TV pilot conceived by the men behind The Outer Limits as a horror anthology that could have accompanied their science fiction series. A series launched from the pilot never materialized, so footage was added to the pilot, and it was released theatrically. I enjoyed the film very much, although some of the padding shows, but it has some truly eerie supernatural scenes, and a good cast, with Landau strong as the architect/investigator. As for his supporting cast, it shouldn't be a surprise that Anderson's character is playing a variation on her role in Rebecca, albeit with some unique twists, while Baker has a rare opportunity for some dramatics that I haven't seen in her other work. Nellie Burt is entertaining as Landau's housekeeper who doesn't share his belief in the supernatural, and is quick to point that out on more than one occasion. I would have relished a series of these tales, but am grateful that we at least have the film, as well as the original pilot on Kino's Blu-ray, along with a pair of commentary tracks from film historians David J. Schow and Eric Grayson.
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