Format: DVD from Nippersink District Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.
I’ve been watching a lot of weird Hammer horror movies of late thanks to a collection I got from the library. Of all of the movies in this collection, Paranoiac is probably the weirdest in a lot of respects. The basic story is mildly strange, but there are a couple of moments here that are completely inexplicable. I say that because, well, the details of them are not explained in the context of the film.
Our film opens on a sort of requiem, a pseudo-funeral for people who have been dead for years. After a little exposition, we discover that a married couple was killed in an accident years previously. A few years after that, one of their children killed himself with grief. Two children, now essentially grown, remain. Eleanor Ashby (Jeanette Scott) is emotionally fragile and appears to have been quite attached to her dead brother. The other is Simon Ashby (Oliver Reed), who is aggressive, drunken, and the sort of rich dudebro who, today, would probably drive a Hummer and wear his baseball caps backwards. Also in the picture is Harriet (Sheila Burrell), the children’s aunt, who raised them once their parents died.
