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The aged mesmerist ambles into the store to face his disinterested young critics and so begins the vindication of Michael Powell, whose vituperated Peeping Tom is at the heart of Michael Reeves' own heady excoriation of voyeurism. "Bloody artistic temperament!" The Old Guard in Swinging London (Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey), aghast and resentful, ready to try out their hypnotic apparatus and plug into the new generation's pleasure dome. Their avatar (Ian Ogilvy) is a juvenile who runs a junk shop named "The Glory Hole," a punk weary of the modish enchantment of the discotheque. Promised "multicolored miracles," he heads to the couple's home and readily becomes a nonplussed Cesare, his actions experienced vicariously by the geriatric Caligaris. Their séances take place in an increasingly darkened living room, with squeamish Karloff and eager Lacey absorbed over the checkerboard tablecloth as if gazing into a sulfuric cauldron. "Ever experience speeding," she asks, her every granny-gnome wrinkle quivering with glee. The addiction of cinema is the presiding metaphor, sensation (the more unsavory the better) is all: A swimming pool at night, the danger of a jewelry burglary, the rush of a motorcycle race, a warm touch in bed and the cold kick of murder. Reeves' modern England is scarcely less bleak than the medieval nightmare of Witchfinder General, a land of woozy nightclubs, snakey alleys and cozy flats with closets leading into sinister laboratories. Borges y Yo, Skolimowski's The Shout and Bigelow's Strange Days, years of virtual reality foretold. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is tellingly adduced for the furioso finale, vacuous youth and envious dotage on opposite sides, charred together. With Elizabeth Ercy, Victor Henry, Sally Sheridan, and Susan George.
--- Fernando F. Croce |