Review: The Medusa Touch

Italian actor Lino Ventura plays French detective Brunel, on exchange in England, and taking on the case of a brutal attack on an author named John Morlar (Richard Burton). He’s alive but in the hospital in a coma, as Brunel investigates Morlar and the mysterious circumstances that led to him being attacked, interviewing those familiar with him. It seems Mr. Morlar was a seriously troubled, brooding man who believed he could make catastrophically bad things happen merely by thinking about them. For some reason, everyone in the film calls this phenomenon ‘Telekinesis’, which isn’t entirely accurate. Lee Remick plays Morlar’s psychiatrist, Derek Jacobi is Morlar’s publisher, Michael Byrne plays Brunel’s partner, Harry Andrews plays Brunel’s English superior, Gordon Jackson is Morlar’s doctor, Sir Michael Hordern plays a supposed psychic, Norman Bird is Morlar’s a-hole father in flashbacks, and Alan Badel plays a judge. Keen spotters of character actors will also spot the likes of Jeremy Brett (who was one of the more popular actors to play Sherlock Holmes), Phillip Stone (from “The Shining”), and Robert Flemyng in small roles.

 

It gets a bit of a pasting critically and I think audiences at the time were a bit dismissive of it too, but I think this 1978 film from director Jack Gold (“Man Friday”, “Aces High” and a lot of TV) nearly works. Nearly, but not quite. Scripted by John Briley (“Gandhi”, “Cry Freedom”, “Christopher Columbus: The Discovery”) and based on a Peter Van Greenaway novel, it’s a bit like a mixture of “The Fury”, “The Dead Zone”, and “Carrie”. In fact, I think it’d make for an interesting movie marathon with those films. You’ll also be reminded of the Aussie genre flicks “Patrick” and “Harlequin”, though I think this is a bit better than those two. It’s certainly one of the better Lew Grade productions (along with “Voyage of the Damned” and “The Cassandra Crossing”), the Michael J. Lewis (“Julius Caesar”, “Theatre of Blood”) score is cheesy but awfully good fun, and the climax is all kinds of crazy.

 

However, there’s definitely some flaws here. For one, the film boasts one of the finest international casts of the 1970s…and proceeds to waste pretty much all of them. Very few of them stick around long enough to make an impression, save a shockingly young-looking Michael Byrne (he had hair once!), the solid Lino Ventura (who has a perfectly weary and sardonic face for a detective), and the perfectly cast and always intense Richard Burton. Burton makes for a much more interesting coma patient than “Patrick” did, partly because we get flashbacks that allow Burton to genuinely act. He’s really good here. No, not “Virginia Woolf” good, but better than you might expect. He certainly looks suitably heavily burdened, borderline suicidal, and this might’ve been the one time in the 70s where that was the intention (We’ve all seen “Exorcist II: The Heretic” and “Equus”, right?). No one was better at being a bitter, spiteful, depressed-looking prick than Burton. Good actor, too (ZING!). Lee Remick gives one of her least stiff performances of this period, though her stunned facial expression gets a tad overused here if you ask me. I would’ve liked more scenes with the wonderful Harry Andrews, Sir Michael Hordern, and Derek Jacobi. Andrews was always the best at playing tough old coppers, Jacobi makes an immediate (if brief) impression, and Michael Hordern is so good as a shonky tarot card reader that two minutes (if that) just seems a criminally short amount of time to spend with him.

 

The film’s view of telekinesis is also ricockulous. Simply thinking about disasters and then having disasters occur is not telekinesis. It’s called precognition (or ESP) and being a miserable arsehole (Albeit a fascinating and intense, miserable arsehole). Hell, Burton’s not even present at some of the scenes of these ‘accidents’, so how can telekinesis (moving objects with your mind) be the cause? Sure, there’s the aeroplane scene where it appears he’s moving it through thought, but at best that’s a way overblown representation of telekinesis and most of the rest of the time, it appears more precognition with a touch of spite, which isn’t exactly what telekinesis is (Then again, we’re talking about something that no one believes really exists, right? Right?).

 

Still, if you liked “The Dead Zone” and/or “The Fury”, you’ll get something out of this. I found it ridiculously watchable, but it’d be much lesser without Burton and much better if the rest of the cast were given more to chew on. There’s a great cast here, why not frigging use them? So I ended up a bit frustrated and disappointed, whilst at the same time having to acknowledge that it’s better than I anticipated from reviews.

 

Silly, unusual, and despite a lot of talk, it’s not remotely boring. This one’s a bit underrated. Not really for those looking for a straight horror film, but it’s certainly got horror elements. Look, it’s not a bad film at all, it’s just that it’s so frustratingly close to being a good one that it leaves you in a bit of a bad mood afterwards.

 

Rating: C+