Sunday, December 17, 2017

233. The Oval Portrait

233. The Oval Portrait aka One Minute Before Death (1972)
Director: Rogelio A. González
Writers: Enrique Torres Tudela based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe
From: Pure Terror

A woman believes she is being possessed by the spirit of her late cousin.

Lisa and her mother arrive at the house of Lisa’s late uncle Robert. He recently died in an asylum and the family is gathering at his estate for a reading of the will. The only people there are Mrs. Warren and the strange Joseph who largely keeps to himself. Rumors have it that the house is haunted and Lisa, very quickly is spooked by a portrait of Rebecca, her late cousin.

Which is the set-up. What follows is a film that looks like Andy Milligan directing a Hammer Horror film. The movie is set just post-Civil War and is trying to maintain a gothic edge, but it never quite manages it. Frankly, the movie feels like a real movie where the entire cast was replaced by actors from the local community theater.

Lisa stumbles across Joseph in the middle of the night seemingly talking to Rebecca’s ghost and the next day he attacks Lisa because she’s wearing one of Rebecca’s dresses. Lisa continues to imagine the house is haunted and Mrs. Warren finally tells everyone the story leading us to a flashback that takes up the majority of the movie. In fact, the flashback is the story and the opening and closing are merely framing devices.

During the Civil War, Joseph, a traitor who murdered in defense of slavery (ie. a Confederate soldier) breaks into the house while running from Union soldiers. Rebecca and Mrs. Warren hide him from Robert because he’s insanely jealous of men. He tells Rebecca if he ever catches her with a man, he’ll kick her out of the house.

They nurse Joseph back to health and Robert is called up to serve in the Union army. Joseph and Rebecca fall in love, but just as they’re about to get married, the Union soldier returns and arrests Joseph. Rebecca is pregnant with his child, though, and the night she goes into labor, Robert comes home. In a fit of rage, he throws her out of the house causing her to miscarry. Robert slips into a catatonic state leading to him being institutionalized and Rebecca is having fits about the loss of her child.

Finally, Joseph, the traitor who murdered in defense of slavery, returns to find Rebecca, except it’s the day of her funeral. The traitor who murdered in defense of slavery is so distraught that he digs her body up that night and brings it back to the house. Mrs. Warren is allowing the traitor who murdered in defense of slavery to stay there as long as he needs to get himself back together.

Which brings us up to the present moment. The reading of the will happens, but Mrs. Warren has a more recent edition that leaves her the house. Lisa runs in, possessed by Rebecca’s ghost, and has a mad romp through the house until she finds Rebecca’s dessicated corpse. Lisa and her mother leave the house with Lisa still seemingly mad with the idea of being Rebecca, and Mrs. Warren is left alone with the traitor who murdered in defense of slavery.

She wakes up that night to find him romancing Rebecca’s corpse. It’s at this moment that she realizes he’s mad, tells him he’s her son, and then shoots him. The final shot is of the field, the ghosts of Rebecca and the traitor who murdered in defense of slavery walking off together. THE END.

It’s boring and not well-done. On top of that, there isn’t a lot of camp value. Nothing’s particularly over-the-top, even though some of the acting is remarkably bad, so the movie never rises to the level of being funny-bad. Plus there’s the narrative problem of making the wronged romantic hero a traitor who murdered in defense of slavery. The Union soldiers become the villains in the set-up, which is problematic on its own, but it also makes things confusing. The setting feels like a plantation house and if Robert were going to be part of any army, he’d be a member of the traitors who murdered in defense of slavery. Instead, he’s a member of the Union. Which means the estate is relatively far north, so how did this traitor who murdered in defense of slavery get there? The fighting wouldn’t have crept that far north.

Of course, if you try swapping the sides, it still doesn’t work. If Joseph is Union, then the father returns after losing the war, but he’s relatively high-ranking so he wouldn’t be able to return so quickly if he could have returned at all. They could have made Joseph a deserter. Then he’d be a Union soldier, but he wouldn’t have been injured and then in need of a long period of recovery at the house. The set-up itself doesn’t offer any good solutions.

Nor does it offer any surprises. The moment Mrs. Warren finds Joseph, we know he’s her son so the revelation at the end isn’t a twist, it’s just clarification that you did figure it out before the movie told you. The house is haunted, but the ghost doesn’t do much until the final sequence where she closes several doors. Lisa’s gone mad, but since the majority of the movie was a flashback about Rebecca and a traitor who murdered in defense of slavery, we neither see that transition nor care because the movie isn’t about, well, the main character.

So it’s not a recommend for a whole host of reasons, but first and foremost is that it’s dull. You can get away with a lot of crap in a movie, but the moment it’s dull, everyone’s gone.

No comments: