Showing posts with label Eileen Atkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eileen Atkins. Show all posts
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| Cute li'l fella |
Lucy Carlesi (Joan Collins) does an act with a dwarf, Hercules (George Claydon), who tries to take liberties with her in her dressing room. When she doesn't comply, he puts a curse on her. The result is that Lucy becomes suspicious of, and terrified by, her adorable baby boy, Nicholas, who is apparently possessed by the still-living Hercules and runs about committing fiendish murders, such as beheading Lucy's doctor (Donald Pleasance) with a shovel! The Devil Within Her is utterly absurd but entertaining, greatly abetted by the very good performances of Collins, Pleasance, John Steiner as a sleazy club owner, Tommy; Ralph Bates [Horror of Frankenstein] as Lucy's husband, Gino; Caroline Munro [The Spy Who Loved Me] as her sister, Mandy; and especially Eileen Atkins [Madame Bovary] as her sister-in-law, Sister Albana. It's Alive, which was made the year before and also featured a killer baby, at least gave its monster fangs and claws and a hideous appearance, but aside from a couple of illusions of the infant resembling the dwarf, this baby is just an adorable little tyke, making the whole project even weirder (the child is so angelic-looking that his gruesome acts seem rather comical). Peter Sasdy also directed Hands of the Ripper and many others. The original title of the film was Sharon's Baby even though the mother is named Lucy. While this film is by no means intellectual, one could claim that it cleverly exploits parents' fears about children and the life/financial changes the little dears bring about. Ray Bradbury once contributed just such a story to an EC horror comic in the fifties.
Verdict: Ridiculous but has a good cast and even some suspense. **1/2.
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| Emma gets some action |
MADAME BOVARY (2 part BBC mini-series/2000). Director: Tim Fywell.
"Truly well-bred people don't give a fig about how their domestics behave. If I hadn't been told otherwise, I would swear you were middle-class!" -- Emma Bovary to her mother-in-law
Emma (Frances O'Connor) marries country doctor Charles Bovary (Hugh Bonneville) but discovers that life with him and his termagant mother (Eileen Atkins) is devoid of the romance, excitement and poetry that she finds in the many books she reads, and her dissatisfaction grows in leaps and bounds. She meets a soul mate named Leon (Hugh Dancy), then has a full-fledged affair with wealthy Rodolphe (Greg Wise). Meanwhile her debts mount as she is taken advantage of by slimy salesman Lheureux (Keith Barron). Although longer than the superior Hollywood film, this is a truncated version of the story with graphic softcore sex scenes. The main problem is that Emma is so distinctly unlikable in this that you can hardly summon up any sympathy for her: as played by O'Connor she comes off like a trampy, utterly thoughtless social climber and nothing more. This British television production is also on the cheap side like a studio-bound soap opera; the all-important ball sequence is almost laughably brief and comparative colorless. The actors in this are all good, but none of them give what could be called a great performance.
Verdict: Stick to the novel and the Hollywood version. **.