I was glad to see this movie end! The acting by that kid and his grandmother is quite bad. I would have liked to have read the book, but the movie completely killed it for me.
shareYeah, right.
And that's why people are still commenting on it (with great enthusiasm,l I must note) almost 40 years later.
You missed something.
"No fate but what we make." -Terminator II
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Obviously, "Pearls before swine". Stick to crap like "Saw" that won't overtax your limited taste and intellect.
shareI agree with the O.P. This film is awful! Uta Hagen is embarrassing, although I understand she trashed the film on Charlie Rose's show for cutting out some of what she called her better scenes. And the twin actors are ineffectual and often inaudible. The director could have at least taken advantage of the actual twins by showing them in the same shot more often -- if at all. But I guess he assumed that, because one brother imagines the other is still alive, the audience had to get spoon-fed some kind of "realism" by having them in separate, choppy shots. In that case, the film could have used one GOOD child actor and achieved a better illusion. One scene -- when a brother sneaks behind a carnival sideshow and stares into a pickled baby -- would have been more surreal had both brothers been staring at it together: now, that would have been good composition. This way, the revelation that Holland is really dead would have been much more surprising; we'd have realized we were watching Niles' hallucination.
shareThe OP is right - this is the most boring piece of trash ever! Just a bunch of random crap happening, very little plot, bad acting, bad directing, bad atmosphere... bad, bad, bad!!! Anyone who likes this drivel is probably as square and boring as the movie!
shareCall me in forty years and see if anyone remembers YOUR story.
"No fate but what we make." -Terminator II
But who remembers THIS story? Seriously, most people have never even HEARD of this movie, so I don't know where you getting that it's so memorable.
shareYou must be watching another film - that's all I can come up with. I have the trailer from YouTube, and even that gives me the willies.
"No fate but what we make." -Terminator II
"Most people have never even HEARD of this movie".
With a handful of exceptions, `most` people haven`t probably heard of `any` movie older than some ten years.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
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I totally agree. A friend sent me the DVD of this film and I just couldn't get into it at all, nor could I figure out what it was supposed to be all about. I managed to sit through the first reel and then that was that. I turned it off. So what had been happening in the first twenty minutes or so? Well, these two eleven years old boys who were dead ringers for Kurt Russell when he was a kid kept running around and whispering things that I couldn't make out and hiding in some cellar and then running around again. All I can say is that as a novelist and screenwriter for this film, former actor Tom Tryon should have stuck to acting. Another thing was that the boys hairstyles and clothing were far more early 1970's than the early 1930's setting of the film.
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I almost gave up on the film around the 20 minute mark too. I actually paused it to see what IMDB viewers had said. I saw enough positive reviews that I decided to give it a chance. And boy, am I glad I did! It is a slow start, but it really sets up the mood and characters, and it all starts to come together as the story develops.
For those who want gratuitous, beat-you-over-the-head death scenes and things like that, then this film will certainly be a let down. I think of this film more along the lines of Val Lewton's horror pictures in the 1940s. It's much more psychological than anything else.
It's an exploration of childhood love and friendship told through a thriller/horror style narrative. Perhaps I just connected with the ideas more than most. As a kid, I usually liked talking to older ladies, and I didn't always connect with kids my age that well. I also tried to be good, and I didn't like it when more "reckless" kids pushed me to do bad things. I felt like Niles was a real kid with real emotions (albeit slightly deranged).
The film is subtle. If you don't like subtlety, then this film will likely disappoint. But if you can appreciate subtlety and allow yourself to be swept away in the mood and atmosphere--and maybe even think a little bit about child psychology--then this is definitely a film worth checking out.
Subtle? I've seen that word used to describe this film numerous times but I'm not sure it means what you think it means. The acting is some of the most over-the-top, theatrical acting I've seen. I'm sure if I saw this at a very young age I would've reacted differently though. A common theme in the positive reviews is that people saw it as children and it scared them, which is fine, but watching it today you should be able to see how badly acted it is.
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"This way, the revelation that Holland is really dead would have been more surprising".
I`m afraid you`re rather overestimating the importance of the "reveal".
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
The "reveal" was a "relief" for me; it seemed obvious from about 5 minutes in, so I was glad when the movie finally dropped the pretense.
As someone else here said they did, I paused after about 15-20 minutes and looked here again to see if it was really worth continuing. I decided to go on, and it did finally pick up shortly after that, but ultimately I gave it a 5. The mood-setting was OK and it had some good acting and directing in many places, but the "reveal" was just too obvious and the tedious parts -- mostly at the beginning -- really were tedious. It's not a bad film, over all, but it's not one that I'd watch again.
I love this movie. I have seen it three times and it never loses any of it's effect. The old fashioned, rural atmosphere is so great it makes you feel as if you're really there. I thought Uta Hagen's performance as the grandmother was amazing and Oscar worthy. Her acting in the scenes where she tried to convince Niles that Holland was dead gave me chills. The first time I watched the film, I wasn't really a fan of it either because I expected it to be a killer child film like The Omen or The Bad Seed. But when I watched it the second time, I enjoyed it for what it truly is and it is now one of my favorite movies.
Death lives in the Vault of Horror!