''Symptoms'' is a 1974 British
psychological horror film
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgen ...
directed by
José Ramón Larraz
José Ramón Larraz Gil (1929 – 3 September 2013) was a Spanish director of exploitation and horror films such as the erotic and bloody '' Vampyres'' (1974).
Biography Early life
Born in Barcelona, Larraz earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree ...
and starring
Angela Pleasence
Daphne Anne Angela Pleasence (born 30 September 1941) is an English actress. Trained in theatre, Pleasence's first major film role came in '' Hitler: The Last Ten Days'' (1973), followed by roles in horror films such as ''From Beyond the Grave'' ...
,
Peter Vaughan
Peter Vaughan (born Peter Ewart Ohm; 4 April 1923 – 6 December 2016) was an English character actor known for many supporting roles in British film and television productions. He also acted extensively on the stage.
He is perhaps best known ...
, and
Lorna Heilbron. The film, based on a story by
Thomas Owen, follows a woman who goes to stay with a friend at her family remote English manor where all is not as it seems. The film had its premiere at the
1974 Cannes Film Festival
The 27th Cannes Film Festival was held from 9 to 24 May 1974. The Grand Prix du Festival International du Film went to ''The Conversation'' by Francis Ford Coppola.
The festival opened with '' Amarcord'', directed by Federico Fellini and closed ...
as the first official British entry. The film was released under the alternate title ''The Blood Virgin''.
Plot
The film opens with brief flashes of a man and a woman embracing. The man later proves to be Brady, the "odd-job man." There is also a flash of the woman's body floating in the lake.
The reclusive Helen invites her friend Anne, a writer, to stay the weekend with her at her family's estate. The large manor, located near a lake in a forest, is overgrown with foliage and has mostly been untouched for an extended period of time. Helen, a
translator
Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...
, has recently returned to her native England after working abroad, and had lost touch with Anne. Helen had broken up with her boyfriend John. The two women have dinner, start a fire in the hearth, during a storm, and talk over tea before going to bed. Helen asks Anne what she thinks happens after death.
The next morning, Helen stops by a chemist store in town, where the clerk Mr. Burke asks about her friend, Cora Porter; she tells him she is not with her. Back at the manor, Helen and Anne go for a walk through the woods. At the lake, Helen tells Anne that someone drowned themselves there. The two women take a boat out onto the water, which unnerves Helen. En route home, they encounter Brady, a handyman who lives in the stables on the property; Anne comments that he was staring at Helen, and Helen responds by saying he disgusts her. Later, Helen spies on him with binoculars from the house.
Helen continues to have trouble sleeping at the house, and hears voices emanating from the attic one night. The following morning, Anne borrows Helen's car to drive to town. On the way home, she stops by the lake and smokes a cigarette, where she is confronted by Brady, who introduces himself. He mentions Helen's friend Cora, whose photograph Anne recalls seeing in the house. Anne returns to the house where she finds Helen distraught over her absence. She confides in Anne that she is ill, and Anne suggests they return to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, but Helen refuses, and then kisses her.
That night, Anne is awoken by moaning noises. She asks Helen if someone else could be living in the house, but Helen dismisses the idea. John arrives at the house to pick up Anne, but Anne insists on staying a few days longer due to Helen's fragile emotional state. Helen observes John kissing Anne in the car, and is upset. That night, Helen's attention is drawn to an attic door in her bedroom, and she begins to
masturbate
Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation may involve hands, fingers, everyday objects, sex toys such as vibrators, or combination ...
furiously. Anne gets up to investigate the noises she hears and is startled by a figure who stabs her to death.
Hannah, the housekeeper, arrives in the morning, and finds Helen asleep on the couch; Helen asks her not to return for several days, saying she needs solitude. Later at the drugstore, Hannah tells Mr. Burke about the interaction, and recalls that she once saw Cora having sex with Brady in the stables, and has not seen her since. While walking through the woods, Helen is confronted by Brady, who asks her about Anne's whereabouts; when he intimates that she murdered Anne and Cora, Helen runs away in a panic.
At the house, Anne's dead body sits in a chair in Helen's bedroom, and Helen is plagued by disembodied voices and other phenomenon. During a rainstorm, John arrives looking for Anne, and enters though an unlocked door. Upstairs, Helen stabs him in the head and neck numerous times, killing him. That night Brady stops by Helen's house to confront her about Cora, whose decomposing body he has found in the lake. He has cut off some off Cora's hair and brought it with him to show Helen. He tells Helen he witnessed her push Cora in, but she coolly denies it. When he threatens to
blackmail
Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...
her, she stabs him repeatedly in the face and the back of the head, killing him. She appears to see flashes of Cora standing in an open doorway, illuminated by flashes of lightning during another rainstorm. The next morning, Hannah, Burke, and his protege Nick arrive at the house. In the living room, they find Brady's corpse. While searching upstairs, they find John's body in the hallway, and Helen staring blankly through the window. In the yard, she watches as Brady and Cora embrace.
Cast
*
Angela Pleasence
Daphne Anne Angela Pleasence (born 30 September 1941) is an English actress. Trained in theatre, Pleasence's first major film role came in '' Hitler: The Last Ten Days'' (1973), followed by roles in horror films such as ''From Beyond the Grave'' ...
as Helen Ramsey
*
Peter Vaughan
Peter Vaughan (born Peter Ewart Ohm; 4 April 1923 – 6 December 2016) was an English character actor known for many supporting roles in British film and television productions. He also acted extensively on the stage.
He is perhaps best known ...
as Brady
*
Lorna Heilbron as Anne Weston
*
Nancy Nevinson
Nancy Nevinson (26 July 1918 – 25 January 2012) was a British actress. She was born Nancy Ezekiel, one of four children of Reemah (née Kadoorie) and David Ezekiel, members of the Baghdadi-Jewish community of Calcutta, India, during the Raj. ...
as Hannah
* Ronald O'Neil as John
* Marie-Paule Mailleux as Cora Porter
*
Mike Grady as Nick
*
Raymond Huntley
Horace Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904 – 15 June 1990) was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s to the 1970s. He also appeared in the ITV period drama '' Upstairs, Downstairs'' as the pragmatic family so ...
as Burke
Production
According to editor Brian Smedley-Aston, Larraz financed the picture himself from his income as a comic book artist and photographer.
According to the
BFI
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...
, funding had come from Jean Dupuis, Belgian heir to the fortune generated by the success of
The Smurfs
''The Smurfs'' (french: Les Schtroumpfs; nl, De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest. ''The Smurfs'' was first created and in ...
, who had decided to go into film production and set up a company in the UK.
''Symptoms'' marked the beginning of a working relationship between Larraz and Smedley-Aston; Smedley-Aston would also later work with several American directors, including
Jeff Lieberman
Jeff Lieberman (born October 16, 1947) is an American film director and screenwriter, known for his cult horror and thriller films ''Squirm'' (1976), '' Blue Sunshine'' (1978) and '' Just Before Dawn'' (1981).
Biography
Jeff Lieberman was bor ...
on ''
Squirm
''Squirm'' is a 1976 American natural horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, starring Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, R. A. Dow, Jean Sullivan, Peter MacLean, Fran Higgins and William Newman. The film takes place in the fictiona ...
'' (1976) and ''
Blue Sunshine'' (1978).
[
]
Casting
Jean Seberg
Jean Dorothy Seberg (; ; November 13, 1938August 30, 1979) was an American actress who lived half of her life in France. Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film ''Breathless'' immortalized her as an icon of French New Wave cinema.
Seb ...
was cast in the role of Helen Ramsey, but was forced to drop out of the production last-minute due to the fact that she was not a member of the Actors' Equity Association
The Actors' Equity Association (AEA), commonly referred to as Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing those who work in live theatrical performance. Performers appearing in live stage productions without a boo ...
; Angela Pleasence was then cast in the leading role.
Filming
The film was shot in Harefield Grove, a grade-II listed, early-nineteenth-century country house in the London borough of Hillingdon
Hillingdon is an area of Uxbridge within the London Borough of Hillingdon, centred 14.2 miles (22.8 km) west of Charing Cross. It was an ancient parish in Middlesex that included the market town of Uxbridge. During the 1920s the civil pari ...
, where Larraz would later film Vampyres
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...
.
Pleasence described the film shoot as consisting of long days which required her to "get up at four in the morning, and not be home before eleven at night," and noted that director Larraz was controlling on set.[ Pleasence had known co-star Peter Vaughan since her childhood as he was a friend of her father, actor ]Donald Pleasence
Donald Henry Pleasence (; 5 October 1919 – 2 February 1995) was an English actor. He began his career on stage in the West End before transitioning into a screen career, where he played numerous supporting and character roles including RAF ...
.[ During filming, she was struck by an overhead light and was hospitalized, but survived the incident.][
Actress Lorna Heilbron recalled the Larraz as being "intense" and approaching the script in a "psychological way."] She stated that she was not provided the entire script until well after she had been cast in the part of Anne.[ Both Heilbron and Pleasence stated in 2016 interviews that they had remained close personal friends since making the film.][
]
Music
The music was scored by John Scott John Scott may refer to:
Academics
* John Scott (1639–1695), English clergyman and devotional writer
* John Witherspoon Scott (1800–1892), American minister, college president, and father of First Lady Caroline Harrison
* John Work Scott (180 ...
.
Release
''Symptoms'' premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival
The 27th Cannes Film Festival was held from 9 to 24 May 1974. The Grand Prix du Festival International du Film went to ''The Conversation'' by Francis Ford Coppola.
The festival opened with '' Amarcord'', directed by Federico Fellini and closed ...
as the first official British entry in May 1974.
Loss and rediscovery
The original prints of ''Symptoms'' were missing for many years; the film was last shown on British television in 1989, although it circulated privately through bootlegs. In February 2016, it was announced that with the help of the British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
, the prints had been obtained and the film would be released on DVD.
Home media
In 2016, the film was released in the United States on DVD and Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
for the first time by Mondo Macabro home video.[ The same year, it received a DVD and Blu-ray release in the United Kingdom by the British Film Institute.
]
Critical reception
Film scholars have noted parallels between ''Symptoms'' and Roman Polanski
Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a (né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two ...
's '' Repulsion'' (1965). '' Time Out'' also noted the parallel, writing that it was: "the finest British horror movie from a foreigner since Polanski's ''Repulsion''. The comparison is inevitable, because thematically the films have a good deal in common, charting the gradual mental dissolution of their spectral heroines. Symptoms imitates, but also improves on its original in a multiplicity of ways. The muted love affair between Pleasence and Lorna Heilbron is etched with enormous suggestiveness, and Larraz’s eye for visual detail is mesmerizing."
''TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...
'' concluded, "a truly chilling atmosphere is created, but its effectiveness is lost when the gore takes over", while the BFI
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery (United Kingdom), National Lot ...
wrote, "it’s a slow burner but John Scott’s excellent score and Larraz’s sparse but effective use of shock tactics (a face at a window; a briefly glimpsed figure at the edge of the frame that really shouldn’t be there) ensure a mounting sense of dread. Pleasence steals the show but is capably assisted by Lorna Heilbron as the new object of her twisted affection and Peter Vaughan."[
]
References
Sources
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External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Symptoms (Film)
1974 films
1974 horror films
1974 LGBT-related films
1970s rediscovered films
1970s English-language films
British mystery horror films
British psychological drama films
British horror drama films
British exploitation films
British psychological horror films
Films directed by José Ramón Larraz
Films scored by John Scott (composer)
Films set in country houses
LGBT-related horror films
Films with screenplays by José Ramón Larraz
Rediscovered British films
1970s British films
1970s mystery horror films