SWEET, SWEET RACHEL (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

I'm not sure what's so "sweet" about Rachel Stanton (Stefanie Powers). She's certainly as victimized as any of the most persecuted heroines of Gothic tales, and in almost every scene her torment is torqued up to Warp Eleven. But there's nothing especially "sweet" about her. 

Rachel's torments start out with a bravura opening that's better than the rest of the movie. On the second floor of a manor house, a man, Paul Stanton, sits playing some sort of game with a deck of non-standard Tarot cards. He seems to see and hear his wife Rachel coming toward him, calling his name. He rushes to her, no longer seeing his real surroundings, and crashes through a window, falling to his death. The real Rachel arrives in the room moments afterward, aghast at Paul's catastrophe. The phone on Paul's desk rings, Rachel answers it, and a voice recites the images on the five Tarot cards Paul had just dealt himself.

Viewers never learn just what sort of occult beliefs the late Paul Stanton nurtured, but Rachel did not share them. However, the outre circumstances of Paul's death make her desire to know if she just concocted her impressions out of a psychotic episode, or if there's really supernatural hanky-panky going on. Fortunately, Rachel happens to live in or near a city with a functioning psychic research facility. From this source come the story's heroes: former surgeon Dr Darrow (Alex Drier) and his aide Johnson (Chris Robinson), a blind man who has developed psychic senses in compensation for his affliction. 

The pool of suspects is not a deep one, for RACHEL only has three other significant characters: Rachel's aunt Lillian Piper (Louise Latham), her husband Arthur (Pat Hingle), and their daughter Nora (Brenda Scott). Early in the film Lillian claims that she was indeed engaged in some sort of occult game with Paul, and that she was the voice on the other end of the line, though this confession removes none of Rachel's feelings of guilt. The husband Arthur is perhaps a little too invisible in early scenes, while Nora loudly reviles Rachel, claiming that she Nora was Paul's true love. This is fairly weak story-scaffolding, as the script never expounds on how the two cousins interacted before Paul married Rachel.

Further, the psychic assassin is still in play, taking exception to Darrow and Johnson trying to solve the mystery. In two separate scenes, Darrow is made to hallucinate in ways that might have caused the deaths of both investigators. Then about halfway through the flick, Aunt Lillian gets killed. Did Rachel go berserk and take her aunt's life?

I'll say one thing for screenwriter Anthony Lawrence-- who also co-wrote the underrated pilot for the PHOENIX TV show-- he doesn't dole out a lot of clues, but he does play fair by spotlighting a suspicious encounter between Arthur and his daughter Nora, one that carries a sexual vibe. (To be sure, one IMDB asserts that RACHEL was based on a book, though the IMDB page for the telefilm does not mention this.) Anyway, Darrow devises a way to trap the psychic schemers-- one that gives Johnson his first real role in the story-- and the duo soon learn that Nora, not the late Lillian, is the one with real mental talents. The motive, supplied by Nasty Arthur, has something to do with the uncle inheriting Rachel's fortune if she gets put away, though technically no one in the movie raises the possibility of committing the heiress. There's a struggle between Nora and the father who cajoled her into killing Nora's true love, and Nora "accidentally" kills her oppressor. Rachel's ghosts, so to speak, are laid to rest, while Darrow and Johnson stand ready to bust more ghosts in the TV show that followed this unofficial pilot--

--Except that when that show debuted under the new title THE SIXTH SENSE, Dreier and Robinson were out and the more telegenic Gary Collins became the sole investigator for SENSE's two seasons, on whose episodes Lawrence enjoyed a "created by" credit. I have not watched any full SENSE episodes since the show's initial run, and re-screening might uncover some gems. However, my dominant memory was that the episodes were dull and lacked any of the visual verve that director Sutton Roley brought to RACHEL. Roley and Lawrence were both essentially journeymen talents in the world of episodic TV, and I didn't see too much of distinction in either man's repertoire, except for the previously mentioned PHOENIX credit for Lawrence.  RACHEL by itself is a cut or two above the average Gothic-thriller telefilm from this period, but nothing more.