The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver

Miriam (Karen Black) is a frumpy 26 year old housewife who's been suffering from nightmares involving her own funeral. She feels stifled in her marriage where she's being forced to procreate as soon as possible and gets inspired at the mall one day when she sees a fancy red blouse and a blonde wig. She purchases them and becomes a new woman, renting a house by the beach, and frequenting dive bars. What's even stranger is that everyone she meets comments about how much she looks like a woman named Sandy who they haven't seen for a while.

Like most TV movies from this era, Mrs. Oliver is a brisk 75 minutes, but there's not a whole lot of tension in the story and it's barely horror-related at all. It starts out as a somewhat engaging feminist manifesto before throwing that out altogether and becoming a strange metaphysical/psychological story about a damaged woman who's suffered tragedy in her past and reinvented herself. Karen Black is wonderful as always and she keeps you interested even when the story drifts off.

Take a bored housewife of a lawyer and a blonde wig and suddenly she's taking on the personality of a dead woman that lived in the house 5 years earlier. She started out as a very reserved, conservative woman with a tight bun and glasses but with the blonde wig she turns into a fairly wild flirt and party animal. And the film is as every bit as strange as it sounds.

This is a pretty good Karen Black film - one of her better films. I would watch this film along with Karen's Trilogy of Terror (TV Movie 1975) for a great night of Karen Black horror.

8/10

This movie starts off quite slow and stays that way for the first half of the movie. But then, it finally kicks into some suspense and mystery, where the female lead tries to find out why she suddenly starts to dress up and takes up the personality of a deceased woman.

The acting was subpar, with much of the characters showing no emotion whatsoever. But, at just over an hour's worth, it's not that bad of a movie to pass the time with. IMDb lists this as a "horror" genre movie, but I wouldn't label it as a horror - more like a "mystery."

Grade C+

Mrs. Oliver, a modern-day lawyer's wife in her late 20s, suffering under the oppressive thumb of her husband--who seems to like her spinsterish, her hair in a tight bun, etc.--is having an identity crisis. She tries on a blonde wig with red lipstick and hoop earrings one afternoon while shopping and feels like a different woman; turns out this alter-ego bears a striking resemblance to a sexy woman named Sandy, who lived at the beach and but disappeared five years prior. Karen Black was on a horror movie roll in 1977, having had great successes with the TV-made "Trilogy of Terror" (written by this film's author, Richard Matheson) and the theatrical screamer, "Burnt Offerings". "Mrs. Oliver", also a TV-movie, has echoes of both, but is nearly weighed down by its red herrings (a curious dream, a flashback to a fire, a painting). Director Gordon Hessler sets a peculiar, almost surreal tone that initially grips the viewer, but Matheson overloads the plot; since Hessler's pacing is so methodical, there's too much going on at too slow a pace. Black is very good (if too old for her role), and George Hamilton does fine as her colorless husband (not the condescending sonuvabitch you may expect, but a workaholic with no interesting qualities). The finale wraps things up sufficiently, so "Mrs. Oliver" isn't a disappointment, exactly. But it's more spooky/romantic than suspenseful and scary, and perhaps that is why it has failed to acquire the type of following Black's other projects have.

Although not a great film, "The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver" does bring together many great (and personal favorite) people of the 70s horror scene. Karen Black was a marvelous leading lady of this decade ("Trilogy of Terror", "Day of the Locust", "The Pyx"), and she's surrounded by excellent supportive actors like George Hamilton ("Evel Knievel", "The Dead Don't Die") and Robert F. Lyons ("The Todd Killings"). Richard Matheson wrote many of the best episodes in "The Twilight Zone", as well as classics like "The Omega Man" and "The Devil Rides Out". Finally, director Gordon Hessler sadly always remained somewhat underrated, but he has great titles on his repertoire like "The Oblong Box", "Cry of the Banshee", and "A Cry in the Wilderness".

Despite the atmospheric and authentically frightening opening sequences, which unfold as a nightmare/hallucination set at a graveyard and uncanny funeral parlor, "The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver" isn't a horror movie. The plot starts out similar to "Diary of a Mad Housewife", but then gradually turns into a supernatural mystery. Black is the uptight and conservative Myriam Oliver, kept on a very short leash by her conservative lawyer husband Greg, whose dreams push her to become a blonde and lewdly dressed girl who hangs out in shabby coastal pubs. But is Myriam's subconsciousness only trying to alter her dull lifestyle, or has she been selected to resolve a 5-year-old murder case?

This certainly isn't the most compelling or exhilarating TV-movie the 70s decade brought forward, but the unusual plot and set-up keeps you curious and interested, and at least it differs from the overload of contemporary "The Exorcist" possession movies. The pacing is often slow, in sheer contrast with the abrupt ending, but a devoted Karen Black - whether prudish or looking like a femme fatale - makes it all worthwhile.