Thursday, October 17, 2013

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

J. Arthur Rank
Directed by Bryan Forbes
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Home Vision Entertainment)

A henpecked husband is coerced by his "psychic" wife to kidnap a little girl. They hide her in a bedroom and pretend that she is in the hospital, keeping her quiet and out of the way. They demand a ransom which leads to a long scene involving a money exchange and chase on the London subway. The police eventually come calling and the couple give themselves away during a seance. The motivation for all of this is not the money, but apparently the wife's desire to become famous for her psychic abilities. However, there is also quite a bit of talk about a dead child leading one to believe that replacing him is the true reason. Kim Stanley gives a brilliant performance but her character is unsympathetic. Richard Attenborough is also good, but his character is difficult to relate to and also does not illicit much sympathy. The only people left to care about are the little girl and her parents, but they are not the focus of the plot. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? explored similar themes much more convincingly only two years later.

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