The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie

The guy from White Shadow is lured to the home of a young hitchhiker. There she keeps him, first by wrecking his car, then by (uh-oh here comes the real "iffy" Stephen King part) busting up his legs and tying him to a bed cause she just doesn't want to let him go. Of course he spends the remainder of the film trying to get some help and kill the girl. I won't give anything else away. I have been tryin for ages to find someone who has seen this so they could back me up that Mr. King ripped-off huge parts of this storyline for his own use.

Since my fifty years as a movie buff, I had never heard of this Jack Starett's movie. He who is one of my favorite seventies director. This one shows us Bonnie Bedelia sixteen years before she becomes Mrs Holy - Generro - McLane in DIE HARD, and several years after her performance in THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY. This is a strange but not uninteresting film, that can make you think of MISERY in terms of scheme and settings; isolation and more or less disturbed characters. I am very happy to have discovered this little gem. I still don't uderstand how this film could remain under my radars.....

A traveling salesman (Ken Howard)gives a teenage half-breed hitchhiker (Bonnie Bedelia) a ride to her isolated shack of a home and soon finds himself with two flat tires and a broken leg, and confined to the bed in the shack at the mercy of this strange young girl, as well as a vicious biker (Anthony Zerbe) who comes to the remote shack looking for some hidden gold. . .

The comparison of this movie to Stephen King's "Misery" is obvious but pretty facile I think. First off, it's probably much less 'miserable" to be the love slave of a young Bonnie Bedelia than of Kathy Bates (and the truly grotesque character I personally envisioned from King's book makes even Kathy Bates look like Bonnie Bedelia in comparison). Moreover though, Bedelia's "Rosalie" is clearly intended to be a sympathetic rather than terrifying character here. She is a real naif, and perhaps not too bright, and she has been terribly abused by all the men in her life from her recently deceased father to Zerbe's biker (who had previously raped her). Even her captive here manages to manipulate her terribly and as a result he does not necessarily have the audience's full sympathy.

This movie is very interesting in that it's not really a horror film like "Misery". Nor is it really a sex fantasy (or sex fantasy gone wrong) like the later 70's film "Death Game". But rather it is a serious, two-or-three character drama. The end, unfortunately, which involves "Rosalie's" real "vengeance", is not very believable. It is very well acted though, especially by Bedelia. I too am surprised it hasn't been legitimately released on DVD yet--Bedelia would, of course, go to star in "Die Hard", Zerbe had previously been in "The Omega Man", director Jack Starret would go to do the 70's cult favorite "Race with the Devil", and Howard go on to, uh, the 70's TV series "The White Shadow". I suspect that (unlike a lot of stuff I watch) this WILL be on DVD someday. You might wait until then, but definitely check it out.

A true obscurity. Most of the user comments reference its unmistakable similarity to MISERY. In Stephen King's defense (not that I'm a huge King fan, nor is the author above "homages" to previous works), even ROSALIE can't be said to have broken new ground with its theme of a woman keeping a man "hostage" (Don Siegel's BEGUILED with Clint Eastwood came out just a year before, for instance). And, the film is OBSCURE. I had to find it on the dark corners of the internet to find an import VHS - with Dutch subtitles to boot (anybody who NEEDS to see this can email me).

A virtual three person show with Bedelia and Howard on screen for virtually the entire running time (Anthony Zerbe shows is the 3rd main actor, though his part is much smaller). The odd perverse atmosphere helps a lot, but there is little in the way of action or psychological insight. Bedelia is not altogether convincing as a Native American, but she truly carries the film with her portrait of a deeply disturbed young woman. At times, the script doesn't seem consistent as to whether Rosalie is totally naive, or whether she is merely cunning. With some things, she appears to have NO understanding of the wider world, but at other times, she keeps up with the well bred Virgil. The twist ending works on one level, but carries little meaning.

Considering that the indie film was originally distributed by 20th Century Fox and that all three of the stars are name actors, it remains a "strange" mystery why this film seems to have vanished. Perhaps, Rosalie's ultimate vengeance?

Sometimes, regretfully seldom though, one single glimpse at the opening sequence is enough to know the film that the film you're about to watch will turn out everything you look for in obscure, neglected and ultra-gritty 70's cinema. In my case it also proves an incurable lunatic, of course, because "The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie" opens with a beautiful pan shot of a forsaken desert area. There are living chickens tied to a tree (!) and the titular character is digging a hole in the ground to dispose of a corpse. Truly magnificent opening and even though nothing else in the film lives up to the beauty of this intro, I'd still recommend the film if just for that! The few reviews I encountered on "The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie" accurately refer to the film as a predecessor of "Misery". I wouldn't go as far as calling Stephen King's story a rip-off, but there are certainly common themes and recognizable sequences to find in this film that came out nearly two full decades before King published his book. Bonnie Bedelia is best known for playing Bruce Willis' wife in "Die Hard" but this is an actual eye-catching and stellar performance! Her still under-aged character Rosalie lures the handsome Virgil to her remote cabin in the New Mexican desert, and she intends to keep him there even if that means physically disabling him. There's where the link with "Misery" becomes indisputable. Rosalie breaks the guy's leg, ties him to the bed and subsequently nurses him like she's a caring wife. The party of two then brutally gets interrupted by a biker looking for the gold that is reputedly hidden in the area somewhere. Rosalie may be young, but she's dangerously deranged enough to take on two adult men. "Strange" is definitely the term to use here, as it's a gritty and thoroughly unpredictable film that moodily unfolds with each minute that passes. The isolated setting is grim and the hopeless situation in which Virgil finds himself stuck in is more than a little disturbing. The interactions between Rosalie and her bed-ridden victim do become a little monotonous eventually and I wouldn't have mind if some of that footage ended up on the cutting floor. 107 minutes of running time is rather long for this type of film, but at least it comes with a crude and offbeat 70's end-shot and the obligatory uncanny "La La La" song. Stunning as it may sound, the script never reverts to being gratuitous exploitation, even though all the themes hint towards that direction. A beautiful and scantily dressed minor literally throws herself at this potent, thirty-something guy, yet he doesn't take advantage of her. Heck, even the sleazy biker doesn't make a move at raping her. It's really quite admirable how the film thrives on awkwardness, stellar performances and various depictions of human despair instead of on sex. "The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie" is a unique find for cult collectors and based on the acting skills illustrated here, it's a real shame Bedelia never become one of Hollywood's most wanted starlets.