THE APPOINTMENT. (1981) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY LINDSEY C. VICKERS. MUSIC BY TREVOR JONES. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY BRIAN WEST. STUNTS BY RICHARD HAMMATT (STUNT ARRANGER) AND ALAN STEWART (CAR STUNT DRIVER).
STARRING EDWARD WOODWARD, JANE MERROW AND
SAMANTHA WEYSOM. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This is a creepy-as-hell little film
from what many people consider to be the golden age of horror movies.
I happen to agree with them. You can't beat the 'Seventies and
'Eighties for great British and American horror flicks. This film in
particular is startlingly good and it's very, very frightening.
It
has so much to commend it that it's hard to know where to start. For
one thing, it stars Edward Woodward (1930-2009) of THE WICKER MAN
and THE EQUALIZER fame.
A stage actor to begin with, he's probably best known for his
marvellous performance in THE WICKER MAN, the
1973 film by Robin Hardy who
sadly passed away earlier this year.
Woodward
plays Sgt. Neil Howie, the 'Christian copper' who
travels to the Scottish island of Summerisle from the mainland in search of a missing
child. If you've seen this cult film, possibly the best British movie
ever made and a magnificent example of the folk horror genre, you'll
know exactly what he finds there instead. His performance is so
convincing that, once seen, you won't forget it.
One
other interesting fact about him (one of many!) is
that his second wife, whom he married in 1987, was the actress
Michele Dotrice. Michele, of course, was best known for playing the
long-suffering Betty Spencer, wife of the accident-prone Frank, in
'Seventies British sitcom SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM.
We've
all seen poor Betty crying: 'Oh, Frank!' when
faced with another of her gormless hubby's monumental screw-ups. That
was one of the truly great sitcoms, like FAWLTY TOWERS, ONE
FOOT IN THE GRAVE, KEEPING
UP APPEARANCES and our own Irish
offering, FATHER TED.
Anyway,
Edward Woodward's performance in this little-shown but utterly superb
British horror film is as flawless as you might expect. He
plays Ian, a man who has to go away on business overnight, an ordinary
enough occurrence but one which will cause him to miss his daughter
Joanna's violin recital at school. He
should be thankful, heh-heh-heh.
Joanna's not very happy about it though, naturally. Because she's a gifted musician, she's been somewhat spoilt and she makes her Daddy feel tremendously guilty about missing her recital. Kids!
Joanna's not very happy about it though, naturally. Because she's a gifted musician, she's been somewhat spoilt and she makes her Daddy feel tremendously guilty about missing her recital. Kids!
The night before he has to go away, Dad
has highly disturbing dreams about crashing his car on his journey to
his titular appointment. Oddly enough, while he's asleep and
dreaming, his wife is having more or less the same dream. That surely
has to be a premonition of some sort.
Their beautiful country house (not a
mansion, but big enough!) is bloody terrifying in the dead of night. Dark shadows abound and the creepy musical score gets ten out
of ten for, well, creepiness. It helps to create an atmosphere of
intense spookiness. Not only spookiness, but also sheer evil.
There's
something evil in the house, but it's not just in the house. It's
shrouding the whole family in a putrefying blanket of darkness everywhere they go. Think
I'm exaggerating? Watch the film for yourself and you'll see what I
mean, haha. A feeling of impending doom hangs over Ian, his wife
Dianna and his daughter Joanna. Something is definitely out to get
them, though they don't know it yet.
We know that the teenage daughter
Joanna's been communing in the nearby woods with something unseen
and, we assume, unpleasant and supernatural. After all, at the
beginning of the film we saw a local schoolgirl being literally
sucked into the same woods by an unknown entity of enormous power.
Those three or four minutes (You-tube them!) are possibly
the scariest few minutes I've ever seen at the start of any film.
Watching the schoolgirl taking the deserted path through the lonely
woods while all around her unseen voices chatter and giggle and call
her name just about made me wee myself with fright, especially as the
ghostly voices are calling out: 'Sandie! Saaaaaaandie...!,' a
name I've been known to go by myself on occasion.
Now, in the dark of night, three big
black dogs make their way into the house and pad silently and
menacingly up the stairs. Yes, you can too pad
menacingly, just watch them for yourself and see! The build-up of
suspense is superb. Knowing that the dogs were in the house, I was
literally hiding behind my hands as Edward Woodward got up out of bed
after his bad dream and went downstairs for some hot milk and a read
of the paper to distract himself.
The
dogs are definitely bad news in the film. In Ian's dream, they were
the cause of his crashing his car. And remember the way that Old Nick
took the form of a big black dog in THE OMEN?
Yeah. Big black dogs are not portents of glad tidings in the movies.
Rather, they are a sign that some real bad
shit is going down.
And
they're not the only creatures stalking through The Equalizer's
family home that night either, but I'd rather be tickled to death
than give away this shocking secret. Will the (mostly)
unsuspecting little family make
it through this terrible night? And if they do, what happens next?
The evil that surrounds them like a filthy miasma surely won't be
content until it's extracted a blood sacrifice...
The
stunts in the film are, quite frankly, spectacular. Kudos to the
stunt arrangers. They've done an amazing job. The scenery is gorgeous
too and the haunted woods are scarier than the woods in THE
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. We only see
a lonely pathway but the film-makers have managed to imbue it with a
sinister menace and malevolence and an overwhelming sense of evil. It takes talent to
do that.
There
was a lot of stuff to do with Dad's car being in the garage for a
service that I didn't quite follow and was a little bored by but,
ultimately, THE APPOINTMENT
is a cracking little horror film from a period that's turned out some
seriously top-notch horror films. I would recommend it to any horror
fan. And if my personal
seal of approval doesn't make you want to rush right off and watch
it, then frankly, I don't know what will...!
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger 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:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment