tek's rating: meh and a half

Tormented (not rated)
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This came out in 1960 (fifteen years before I was born). I watched it in 2015, because it was included on a DVD of four movies, which I had basically just bought for one of them, The Little Shop of Horrors. (The other two are Swamp Women and The World Gone Mad.) Anyway, after I watched this, I wasn't quite sure what category to list it under, or whether to bother writing a review at all. But then I decided to use this as an excuse to create a new category, for B-movies.

So... it starts out in an old lighthouse, which is no longer functional. A Jazz pianist named Tom Stewart apparently goes there to think, or whatever. In the opening scene, he's talking with a singer named Vi, with whom he had recently broken up. I guess to him, it was just a fling, but she's obsessed with him. (He says he'd never led her on, and she doesn't deny that, but she's still not willing to let him go.) There's a sudden, inexplicable shift in the tone of the conversation, something that seemed to me like a complete non sequitur, wherein Vi stops arguing with Tom for just a moment.... See, they were in a small room that I think was about halfway up the lighthouse, and she wanted to go up higher, out onto the deck at the top. I have no idea why she'd want that or why she'd pick that moment to act like they were still a couple and not in the middle of an argument at all, but obviously they needed to be on the deck for the plot to move forward. I just can't imagine why the movie didn't simply start on the deck. And that one thing basically set up my expectations of the movie making little sense and being poorly written... and my expectations weren't wrong.

Anyway, as soon as they get up on deck, they start arguing again. Then the railing gives way, and Vi falls. But she's still clinging on for a little while, begging for Tom to help her... right after she'd been threatening to reveal their relationship to Tom's fiancée, Meg. (I'm not at all sure whether their relationship had been going on while Tom and Meg were together, or if it had ended before Tom and Meg's relationship started. So it might not have been a major issue, anyway, but I think Vi was also threatening to ruin his career, or something. I forget.) Anyway, when Vi falls, Tom considers helping her, but ultimately decides to let her fall to her death.

This event happened a week before Tom's wedding to Meg was supposed to take place, and throughout that week, Tom is haunted by Vi's ghost, who says she'll never leave him alone. But Tom's still determined to marry Meg (though it's unclear whether he truly loves her, as he says he does, or if he's just marrying her for her family's money). Of course, being tormented by a jealous ghost makes Tom increasingly distracted and agitated. Things get worse when a beatnik ferry driver who had brought Vi to the island gets wise and tries to blackmail Tom. Meanwhile... there are some other characters, including Tom's blind landlady, though she's not terribly important to the story. Actually, the second most important character (after Tom) is Meg's 8-year-old sister, Sandy, who has a crush on Tom. I'd say she's the best thing about the movie; probably the best actor and only really likable character, besides being kind of adorable.

And I don't want to divulge any more of the plot. Mostly it was just ridiculous, as you might expect B movies to be. Which of course means it can be kind of fun to watch ironically, I guess. But it's definitely not something I feel the need to ever watch again.


B-movies index