PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
Though
the plot of MEDUSA TOUCH reads like an imitation of Stephen King’s
CARRIE, the source-novel by Peter Van Greenaway was published a year
before King’s novel. The success of CARRIE’s film-adaptation
still may have paved the way for the cinematic translation of the Greenaway
work.
MEDUSA,
directed by Jack Gold, has a classy look to it, not unlike other
upscale horrors of the seventies, such as THE OMEN. Misanthropic
Mister Morlar (Richard Burton) is nearly bludgeoned to death by an
unknown assailant, so Detective Brunel, a French cop visiting in
London, gets on the case. As he does, Brunel begins to cull evidence
to suggest that Morlar hacked off a lot of people because he brought
about calamities to those that knew him. It’s eventually revealed
that Morlar possesses incredible telekinetic abilities, and that he’s
been using those talents subconsciously for years, bringing about
disasters, apparently out of a subconscious God-complex.
Brunel’s
methodical realization of the horrific truth is well-handled, and
Lino Ventura’s portrait of the world-weary cop is far more
compelling than Richard Burton’s standard “booming-voice”
incarnation of the malevolent misanthrope. The down side is that
Morlar has no real psychology to speak of; he’s just mad as hell at
the world for overly vague reasons (aside from having had a termagant mother). The “Medusa” metaphor has no
real application, and actually would have worked a lot better for
Stephen King’s titular telekinetic, who, unlike Morlar, has serious
body-shame issues. Given the god-like proclamations of Burton’s
character, maybe THE ZEUS TOUCH would have been more appropriate.
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