Tormented [PG]

An accomplished jazz pianist has a fling with a beautiful singer, but breaks it off one night and says that he’s going to marry another woman. The singer doesn’t like this at all and things turn really horrible when the railing of the lighthouse balcony the two have been squabbling on gives way. Holding on for dear life, the singer reaches for the pianist, but he just lets her fall to her death. Now he’s paying the price. Trying to convince himself he’s got no cause to be guilty, the pianist tries to go ahead with the wedding, but it seems the ghost of the singer is determined for it to be otherwise and she continues to haunt and torment him in frightening ways. 

From the synopsis, this sounds like it could be a good one huh? I’m sure if it were in the hands of Wes Craven or John Carpenter of even Alfred Hitchcock (if he ever deigned to do a paranormal horror movie) it could have been really good. As it is, this is just another weak-handed B-grade horror movie that sucks you in with this story that has good potential, but ultimately just falls flat. Admittedly, towards the end things start to get interesting and suspenseful as a possible threat to a child rears its head, but sadly nothing of that ever comes to fruition and the movie just falls with a thump like the singer from the lighthouse balcony. 

There’s a lot in this movie that could really be freaky and deliver the chills if it were placed in the hands of a modern director. As I mentioned before, Craven, Carpenter, Van Sant, De Palma, any of these guys could make a solid go of this. Even Hitchcock could turn it into a great psychoanalytic thriller about the tortures of guilt and what it can do to the mind. We’ve got a guilt complex, that’s the foundation. Whilst our ‘hero’ didn’t actually kill the singer, he didn’t do anything to prevent her death or help prolong her life and that is as good a cause as murder itself to feel guilty. With this in mind, the hauntings then take on a psychological edge as they can really be perceived as hallucinations and manifestations of his own guilt, seeing as no one else can ever see nor hear when the ‘ghost’ of the singer talks to the pianist or appears before him. But then again, there are these moments of ‘real’, tangible paranormal activity towards the end of the film during the wedding ceremony, and even before that with traces of the dead singer appearing from seemingly nowhere and even a secondary character hearing and trying to converse with the ghost. I guess the aim of this movie in terms of the ‘scare’ factor was to achieve it through those moments of confusion as to whether the protagonist is actually seeing a ghost or if it’s his own imagination. Of course, as soon as another character latches onto that ‘ghost’ element, then the thrills of the unknown dissipate. 

I think this movie could have been lifted a bit if it had had stronger performances as well, but sadly the case is that the performances are all a bit flat. You can see that Richard Carlson who stars as the pianist gave it a solid shot, but there’s just something in his performance that doesn’t gel and it just drags the whole thing down and makes it very ugh. 

Starring Susan Gordon, Lugene Sanders, Joe Turkel, Lillian Adams, Juli Reding, Gene Roth, Vera Marshe, Harry Fleer, Merritt Stone, George Stanley, Dick Walshe, and Leslie Thomas, Tormented is a flat b-grade horror flick with a potentially good story that just sadly wasn’t executed as well as it could have been. I know I use the term ‘b-grade’ in a negative way, but I would like it to be known that there are some good, cult b-grade movies out there and I recognise this. This movie just isn’t one of them. Filled with romance, drama, suspense, and hauntings, I guess it was fine, just not great and I do think that in the hands of a good horror director or even thriller director, it could have been better.