Persecution

Well, it has a couple of interesting camera angles and a sexy performance by the actress who plays the woman paid to seduce the hero, but the slow pacing causes it to drag too often, the editing is astonishingly bad at times, and the "plot secrets", when revealed, turn out to be totally insignificant. But it's in the last 15 minutes that the movie really jumps off the rails, and comes up with a silly and far-fetched conclusion. (*1/2)

I saw this as Graveyard in a mediocre copy. The thing is producer Kevin Francis, I'm told, won't allow these movie he produced to be released now. Turner is good so it Bates, but the ending confrontation really goes on and on and drags out so much that when the very appropriate ending comes it lacks the impact it should have. Perhaps part of the problem is the lack of music and too talky a finale. The story is more disturbing than scary but the beginning is really the best part, then after an unexpected kill the movie becomes slower and less interesting. Deserves to be seen and seen in better form. Of the three horror films Francis produced I'd put this in the middle, The Ghoul is worse, the final Werewolf film is the least original but the most satisfying.

Once one of the queens of melodrama ("Peyton place " "imitation of life") and of the film noir ("the postman always rings twice") , Lana Turner whose career had waned in the sixties , followed Bette Davis' and Joan Crawford 's footsteps :she tried her hand at horror movies ;so you get what you expect: a festival of camp .

The most memorable scenes are to be found at the beginning and at the end of the film:the Xmas night , enhanced by carrols , in the gloomy room where Davis finds his presents, while the sound of mechanical soldiers is heard ; then his final revenge "I said : lap up!"

The screenplay is disjointed, the flashbacks -which feature Trevor howard,all the same!)are badly introduced in the story ; the atmosphere is rather disturbing , with the principal and her beloved cats that seem to be her real family , for she has her way to destroy her human one. An aging Turner's face adds to the lugubrious Gothic house .

A note about Olga-Georges Picot who plays Monique :in the late sixties/early seventies,this polyglot embassador's daughter was one of the most promising French actresses and played opposite very famous partners ; but her physique and her good looks went against her ,and by the mid-seventies ,she was relegated to soft porn material : in "persecution" ,her role already "predated" her future career:despondent about her failed career,she threw herself out of a window at the age of 57.

If you like seeing sick, narcissistic folks destroying each other, then I have a film for you..."Persecution"! It's a movie about two very sick people and the twisted relationship they have together.

The story begins with a young boy drowning his mother's beloved cat in a bowl of milk! Apparently, the cat was loved more than he was and he was sick of it and killed the poor animal. Animal lovers might not want to see this as it's pretty realistic.

Many years pass. The boy has grown up and is married with a baby. For some inexplicable reason, he brings his family to see his mother...a cold, uncaring manipulator...full of snide comments but no love whatsoever. Soon she hires a sexy new maid and you realize the 'maid' is basically a prostitute coming to destroy the son's marriage. But before this can happen, one of his mother's cats suphocates the baby...and this, combined with the seduction lead to very bad things...at which point the son snaps and spends the rest of the movie tormenting his soulless mother.

While the film is well made and Lana Turner is excellent as the evil mother (in fact, it's one of her best performances), you might wonder WHY...why would anyone want to watch it? After all, it's a very unpleasant film...though an odd and intriguing character study of the evil mom and her adult son. In fact, if the film was intended to be a prequel to "Psycho", it would have fit very nicely into the Hitchcock film...showing what led to Norman becoming such a dangerous psychopath.

By the way, there is a goof that made me laugh. The son digs up a grave and the body is a skeleton...yet the bones of the hand are fully articulated...like a college model. Real human skeletons completely fall apart as there is nothing to hold these bones together.

I believed I was knowledgeable of movies like this. I thought I was on top of all the B exploitation efforts by faded Hollywood actresses, from the high profile flicks of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Olivia De Havilland to forays by the likes of Ava Gardner, Jeanne Crane, Ann Southern, Veronica Lake, Ruth Roman, and Wanda Hendrix. I thought I knew most of the misfires from these faded ladies from Hollywood's golden era. Except for this one. I've never heard of this one. Ever. Not in my readings of tomes on exploitation and horror films, not in the film commentaries on DVDS, not mentioned in passing by ANYONE on YouTube or in chat rooms. Zilch. Which surprises me, because this film is ripe for that kind of thing. Lana Turner is not a name that springs to mind in regards to this kind of movie, but she made at least another exploitation title(THE BIG CUBE), so she dabbled in this genre a little. The movie itself is rather slow-moving, more like a gothic soap opera than a full-on horror movie. Turner herself looks great (think a late 1950s Lana, as she looked in her IMITATION OF LIFE/PAYTON PLACE era), and a large chunk of the production budget probably went into keeping Ms. Turner coiffed and dressed in the high Hollywood style to which she was accustomed. Turner does an admirable job as the icy Carrie Masters, an overbearing mother who dominates her adult son. It's more psycho-drama than camp, which makes for a slog of a viewing experience. This may be why it isn't remembered today.