Der Mann nebenan

Toward the end of his tragically short life, after being blacklisted by scumbag cowards in Hollywood because of his HIV positive status, Anthony Perkins had to pay the rent somehow and so, being offered nothing but a steady stream of PSYCHO rip-offs and twitchy lunatic roles(which he'd been turning down for years) he finally relented and took jobs like "Edge of Sanity" and "A Demon in My View" to try to put a little money in the bank for his wife and kids before he shuffled off this mortal coil.

"A Demon in My View" unlike "Edge of Sanity"( which is awful garbage) is a decent film and not a bad note for Perkins to go out on at all; the film is a faithful adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel about a man who , let's face it, has a lot of similarities to a certain Motel keeper from somewhere out west; a predilection for killing people would be the biggest, I suppose, but hanging out with inanimate objects (in this case department store mannequins)and forming deep emotional attachments to them is another; I imagine Perkins could do stuff like this in his sleep and its to his credit that he resists going the full-tilt Klaus Kinski route (think CRAWLSPACE)and makes his character a shade more interesting than the usual Norman Bates clone.

Don't believe the bad reviews you may read about this film, this is a fine movie about a killer. The look of the film is very bleak which helps to set the atmosphere, Donaggio's score is good, and the cast is brilliant. Perkins' character spies on the people around him and he has a thing for mannequins, and his spending time with them is pretty creepy. Perkins seems to have been typecast as the weirdo towards the end of his career, but he does a very fine job as the mysterious man here never overacting once. German actor Bohm is one of the best of his generation in Germany, and I don't know if he was dubbed in this movie (I only have the German version where he does his own voice) but I know for a fact that he speaks very good English in real life. Ward of course is the daughter of British actor Simon. This is one of those rare thrillers where you really get under the skin of the characters. Take Perkins' character for instance, he's obviously a poor lonely soul in pain and you feel for him. If YOU feel this is a slow and boring movie you're probably right, and quite welcome to go and watch something more suitable instead, like "Con Air".

Poor Tony Perkins, ever since Psycho he's doomed to play these parts. Anyway, this is another in the same vein, pretty well done; as imported into the US it seems so Veddy Veddy English with a slightly jarring Teutonic touch popping up from time to time.

I found parts of it hard to keep track of, but maybe that's me. I actually watched it a second time and was able to keep track of it all then.

Kind of a Hitchcockian sensibility to the denouement; justice gets done, sort of, but not in a straightforward manner by any means.

Appealing as the female lead is, he part is pretty minimal considering her position in the credits.

Ruth Rendell's book was not among her best ;it's a far cry from her masterpiece " a judgement in stone" or such triumphs as " a fatal inversion "; the love triangle subject is hackneyed ,and it seems that they 're in it just to secure a sweetened ending . The detective story was written well before the movie,so I do not think that Rendell had Perkins in mind when she wrote it ;but it's obvious that a sexually-repressed shady guy making love to a mannequin dressed up as his mom , it inevitably reminds the viewer of Norman Bates who followed the highly talented actor through his whole career ; filmed in studio in England and on location in Hamburg , in a drab part of the city , the film , except in rare moments such as the Guy Fawkes Day , is complicated instead of complex:too many characters ,( Perkins ' young homesake is uninteresting ,it already was on the paper and Uwe Bohm is extremely bland .)

Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction: a package (containing cannabis) was sent to another Perkins who was staying in the same hotel in Cardiff and the actor was fined 200 pounds ;in the film there's an -insignificant- subplot : in the seedy appartment house,there are two persons named Johnson ,Arthur (Bohm) and Anthony (Perkins!) , and the latter intercepts his namesake's letter and sends a fake one to his lover . The only reason where you would sit through this deja vu thriller is Perkins : even with clichés such as childhood memories flashbacks which come back to haunt him ,even unsupported by a weak cast , he was professional to his fingertips and,considering his huge talent , it's a sad and tatty end to a man who provided a model for countless thrillers and whose career was partially blighted by Hitchcock's tour de force .An extra star just for him and his unforgettable hangdog looks ,still the man with the child in his eyes .