Rating of
1.5/4
Too much to dream last night
Bribaba - wrote on 05/04/11
Made at the time (1975) when ‘the kids’ were running Hollywood, this was perceived as Lee J Thompson’s attempt to get with the program. The veteran director had visited many different genre, everything from thrillers (Cape Fear) to war (Guns of Navarone), but this was his first venture into the realm of the supernatural.
Peter (Michael Sarrazin) isn’t at all proud of the dreams he’s been having. - they feature total strangers and culminate in a murder. For reasons not entirely clear, he surmises that he must be the victim reincarnate. After his dreams fail to register on the dream-o-meter at the local clinic he sets out to resolve the mystery, perhaps discovering his previous self along the way. The trail leads him to a mother and daughter ,who may or may not be his wife (Margot Kidder) and daughter (Jennifer O’Neill). Odd bit of casting this as the actresses were the same age at the time.
Like the comparatively recent Birth it has an outrageous premise but unlike that film it unfolds in a dated, leaden way which has ‘Made-For-TV’ all over it. It’s certainly not the ‘electrifying motion picture’ the tagline would have us believe. The material would have been ideal for kids like Brian De Palma who had already made Sisters, or Polanski who had Rosemary’s Baby to his credit. I was hoping that the film itself might be worthy of cinema’s own form of reincarnation: the remake, but really it’s best it stays buried.
