TORMENTED

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
TORMENTED - 1960 USA Release: Sept. 22, 1960 Cheviot Productions, Allied Artists Pictures, Panton Film Distributors Rated: USA: N/A

Bert I. Gordon was a Writer, Producer, and Director whose heyday was in the 1950s and early 1960s and one of his many accomplishments was living to the century mark.

Another one of his accomplishments was the legendary Forrest J Ackermann nicknaming him Mr. B.I.G. (Bert I. Gordon. Oh Forrey! You card!).

Yet another one of his accomplishments was making 25 SciFi movies, many of them Horror.

Last but not least was Bert living long enough to see a bunch of young, snot-nosed whelps mock his old movies for laughs. In fact, Mystery Science Theater 3000 mocked more Bert I. Gordon (KING DINOSAUR, BEGINNING OF THE END, THE CYCLOPS, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, THE SPIDER, VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS, PICTURE MOMMY DEAD, NECRO-MANCY, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, BURNED AT THE STAKE, SATAN'S PRINCESS) movies than the output of anyone else, and that was back in the 1990s when MSTK3 was actually funny! Their success was significantly based on what a hilariously bad director Bert I. Gordon was!

Of course, where I'm going with all of this is my review of Bert's movie, TORMENTED.

Whew! Whatta stinker!

And yet at the same time, not too bad.

How does that come together? It's like this -

Now you'd think that a movie that was largely written by George Worthing Yates (THEM, CONQUEST OF SPACE, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, SPACE MASTER X-7, FRANKENSTEIN 1970, THE SPIDER), would be anywhere from great to at least interesting, except that Bert wanted to add his little bit to Yate's script. Because yeah, George's work needs polish?

So George worked with Bert one more time, on TORMENTED, and it was the last time. George not only had enough of Bert, he never wrote another feature again. And this was at a time when George's paycheck for script's was one of the largest expenses in any budget, like the Regal and American International Pictures movies that he wrote for.

So what did Bert do that was so bad? Before we get into the stinker part, let me tell you where Bert excelled, because there was a solid reason that he was constantly getting hefty contracts to make movies that opened alone on theater screens, instead of starting life getting packaged as a double feature.

For reference I'll point to any of a huge number of crap Horror movies today. I don't need to name them, I'm sure you've seen more than a few so take your pick.

The bad movies all start with unnecessarily long and drawn out character development. To keep us watching, this is preceded by the 5 minute Gotcha. In the first 5 (or Cthulhu forbid, 10 minutes), we are treated to the instigating factor. Someone kills someone else - or thinks that they did - and anywhere from a year to 20 years later the victim returns to the scene of the crime to either be chased by the ghost of, or the healed still living body of, who they thought was dead. Either that or the killer from way back has returned to kill the aging murderers or children of his/her old victim for... reasons.

Dull, right? SO dull! Sure, John Carpenter could pull it off with HALLOWEEN because he was aware of the plot-hole traps and fixed every one. Then again, HALLOWEEN was nearly 50 years ago, so what is everyone else's excuse?

Bert I. Gordon would have none of that. In the first 5 minutes you are going to get the inciting death or accident or whatever gets the damn ball rolling. And in that first five during all of the panic or ballyhoo that leads up to that inciting moment, you are going to get all of the backstory and character development you need to understand the rest of the movie. Motivation will never be lost on you in a Bert I. (I for Ira) Gordon movie.

TORMENTED starts with an island at faux night. Yeah, this is black and white and Bert couldn't afford good film or enough lighting so all of the night scenes are clearly daylight scenes with the film speed and lens Focal stops adjusted accordingly, courtesy of cinematographer Ernest Laszlo1 (ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, THE SPACE CHILDREN, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, DADDY'S GONE A HUNTING, LOGAN'S RUN). We hear a man's forlorn voice talking to us, not so much narration as a remembrance. He's thinking back on how the story we are about to see all started. His name is Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson2: THE GHOST BREAKERS, HOLD THAT GHOST, THE AMAZING MR. X, THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, FAMOUS GHOST STORIES, RIDERS TO THE STARS, THE DOOMSDAY FLIGHT, THE VALLEY OF GWANGI) telling us how much he once loved this island. So what happened?

In the island's lighthouse, Tom is held by a shapely blonde and buxom Vi (Juli Redding) who begs Tom to please take her back. She wants him to leave with her, tonight. After all of these years apart she came out to the island on a private craft so no one would know. She knows about Tom's newfound success, how he's about to marry a young heiress with plenty of wealth, but Vi promises that everything can be as it was!

Tom won't hear of it. He and Vi have been apart for too long (months? Years?). He finally put his life back together, he has his first hit album, and he's marrying Meg, that's all there is to it.

Tom means Vi no ill will but he's now, finally, after all of this time, in love with someone else. It doesn't matter what split him and Vi apart, who is to blame, or how much time has passed. All we need to know is the few terse words they have with each other.

Then Vi hints at the larger picture. She now wants Tom back because he's successful. She doesn't want him to marry someone younger than her. She doesn't want Tom to have the life he's struggled so hard to achieve. Tom goes to leave but as he does, Vi says she'll make his letters to her public. She saved them all, you see, because you never know (when blackmail will come in handy).

Again, it doesn't matter what Tom wrote in those letters. What matters is Vi thinks they can destroy his new career and his plans for a life with Meg. Tom is stilled by her threat as obviously he thinks they're sensitive too.

Capricious with her new power over him, Vi skips happily up the steps to the top of the lighthouse, changing the subject to let her threat sink in. She steps out onto the lighthouse walkway and leans against the guardrail, mockingly telling Tom that if she can't have him, no one will. He will leave Meg right now or she will destroy his life.

Unfortunately, Vi has no idea that the decrepit lighthouse, with its cracked walls, dead light, and broken windows, is falling apart. She learns that quick when the guardrail she leans on gives way and she is barely holding on with one hand, four stories above the jagged rocks below. Suddenly she's begging Tom for help, mere seconds after laughing in his face about how she'll destroy his life forever.

While a surprised Tom considers his options Meg slips and falls to her... death?

This was Bert's idea of a 5 minute Gotcha. Everything that just happened will affect everything else throughout the movie and the effect will be immediate.

Excellente!

Tom apparently spent the rest of the evening looking for Vi. Is she dead? It was dark. Did she miss the rocks and fall safely into the sea? Is she still alive? Come morning Tom is looking across the ocean when he sees her floating face up. He swims out to an unconscious or possibly dead Vi and brings her to shore. He no sooner lays her out on the beach than she turns into a mound of seaweed. It was never Vi, Tom held a pile of flotsam seaweed.

A little girl named Sandy Hubbard (Susan Gordon: ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE) walks up and blithely starts a conversation with him. They know each other because her much older sister is Tom's fiance, Meg (Lugene Sanders). However, an exhausted and guilty Tom gently asks her to leave him alone. Sandy goes to leave when she sees a watch on the beach. On the back of the watch is Vi's name etched in the metal.

So the rest of the movie goes.

Tom didn't kill Vi, but he didn't save her either. He spent his whole life working and sacrificing to become a successful jazz pianist (actor Richard Carlson was 47 at the time this was made and he looked it) and finally now, late in life when most men of his era were becoming grandfathers3, he's finally at the brink of success. He's had a hit album and, while the wealth is slow in coming, he'll play Carnegie Hall next month and be married to the woman he loves by the end of the week. Suddenly Vi comes back from the past threatening to destroy everything if he doesn't submit and share his success with her.

Yeah, I think all of us in Tom's situation would have hesitated as well. TORMENTED doesn't paint Tom as a bad guy. He's a guy who has struggled all of his life. His future father-in-law Frank (Harry Fleer: THE UNEARTHLY, THE COSMIC MAN, THE DEVIL'S PARTNER, SHOCK CORRIDOR [1963]), despises Tom's social status, what he does for a living, and hates the idea that his daughter is marrying down instead of up.

Meanwhile, Vi is appearing up everywhere: A floating hand there, a floating head here, but is she a ghost or Tom's guilty imagination?

And yeah, there is a living bad guy. Enter one Nick (Joe Turkel: VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS, THE SHINING, BLADE RUNNER). He's the boat jockey who brought Vi to the island. He doesn't know where Vi is and he doesn't care (he doesn't know she may be dead). If Tom wants to get married and have a mistress on the side that's fine with him, but Vi never paid for the boat ride and he knows she never went back. Nick wants his money, Dad.

Man, nobody could play the fake-friendly sinister creep like Joe Turkel!

Seems it was a long boat ride from the mainland and Vi said a lot about Tom Stewart. So when Nick overhears at a local eatery that Tom is marrying into a wealthy family, he suddenly decides that blackmail is a great career move and, like the late Vi, he wants his leash around Tom's throat forever too.

Haunted by the living and the dead and trying to keep it all together as his wedding day approaches and his future father-in-law is looking for any excuse to abort the wedding, Tom is hearing and seeing things. His life is falling apart and he's about to crack.

Well! This all sounds pretty great, right?

And it would be except...

OMG the special effects are just the worst!

Throughout the movie I found myself trying, really making an effort to accept the horribly cheap (even for their era) ghost effects, telling myself that they look bad because Tom is hallucinating.

On top of the bad effects, however, Bert had no artistic eye for directing. I mean, every single amateur hour Found Footage Horror movie I've ever seen has more artistic (i.e. visually compelling) imagery than this. Every single scene that could have been scary wasn't scary because Bert wanted it all well lit. All of the creepiness that seemed inherent in the story screenwriter Yates wrote, everything we hear and see how people behave and react, was upended by the bright TV Show lighting and the "get everyone in the picture" camera work.

Too many actors in the scene at once and all having nothing to do.

Several times it appears as if the actors were about to do one thing, then Bert belatedly had them stop and go over There.

Several other times the scene is leading up to some thing that is about to happen, and its heavily telegraphed because the characters begin babbling the most tedious nonsensical junk, padding the movie as it leads up to a scare that won't happen because the lighting is all sunshine, mundane, and chipper.

There's one church scene that comes to mind where Nick intrudes on Tom and Meg's wedding rehearsal, in front of everyone, and for a moment all of the actors are standing there confused, unsure of how to play out the scene.

Criminy!

Then there's that jazzy film score. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Tom is a jazz musician and Bert wanted his movie to be like, hip, Daddy-O.

And yeah, again. You can use a loud blast of music for a cheap jump scare. But in every case when something could be scary, the loud jazz music sting swells in, announcing itself, then plays over the potential scare like a drummer going into a solo while the singer is singing. And then it continues after the wrecked scare is ruined.

1 Shriek Girl, but don't kill it before it breeds. TORMENTED is a great Psychological Horror Thriller concept that began in the wrong hands and can be done so much better.

TORMENTED is Ripe For Remake!

UPDATE: Not for the first time, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has made me reconsider my original rating. After watching MST3K's mockery of it, and watching TORMENTED a second time, I'll admit that it has that rarified So Bad It's Good quality to it, and give it 3 Negative Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2024 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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