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Jazz musician Tom (Richard Carlson) is to marry the love of his life Meg (Lugene Sanders) on an island paradise - when an old flame of his, Vi (Juli Reding), shows up, and she tries to blackmail Tom into ditching Meg and marrying her instead, and has the means to do so. However, she does so on top of a dilapitated lighthouse, leans against the railing, the railing breaks and she falls to her death. Tom didn't push her mind you, but he could have saved her. However, with her out of the way, with nobody knowing she has actually come to the island, and with the body never turning up, things couldn't have turned out much better for him after all. Thing is, even if he didn't actively murder her, Tom's soon overcome by guilt, and that causes him to see her everywhere, or hear her everywhere, so much so that he starts to believe in ghosts. Meg is much too involved with her wedding preparations to attribute Tom's strange behaviour to anything but cold feet, but others, like Meg's younger sister Sandy (Susan Gordon) and her blind housekeeper Mrs. Ellis (Lillian Adams) are more sensitive to his weird mood changes. And then young Nick (Joe Turkel) shows up who has secretly shipped Vi to the island but is still owed his fare. But when he learns Tom is to marry another woman he's quick to figure Tom's the perfect blackmail victim ...

Now even if he has made all sorts of movies, Bert I. Gordon is best known to horror and science fiction fans for his giant monster films like The Amazing Colossal Man, The Spider, Village of the Giants and Empire of the Ants, to name but a few, while this little horror gem is rather under-appreciated by and large - which is a pity, as other than his creature features, this is a astoundingly atmospheric film (even if Gordon paints in broad strokes at times) that doesn't try to overwhelm with spectacle but follows the Hitchcock school of suspense and delves deep into the psychology of its main character, while at the same time getting the most out of its sparse locations. Now it might not be the most perfect of films as Bert I. Gordon definitely wasn't the most subtle of directors, but it's a really worthwhile piece of psychological horror nevertheless.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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