Add "Tormented" to the list of 1960's "B" list films that with a healthy dose of present day technology and a credible rewrite, could actually turn out to be a pretty good psychological thriller. The basic plot involving a jazz pianist dumping one love affair and about to marry someone else takes a turn for the worse when jilted lover Vi (Juli Redding) falls to her death from atop a lighthouse landing. Former boyfriend Tom (Richard Carlson) could have saved her, but because he didn't, he now suffers guilt over her demise.
There are actually some interesting and haunting elements to disturb Tom's psyche, the third set of footprints in the sand and the record that makes it's way over to the turntable to play itself. Those however are offset by apparitions of Vi's head talking to Tom and her disembodied hand feeling around the floor for the new girl's wedding ring, each conspiring to elicit a chuckle from the viewing audience.
As if Tom's conscience isn't guilt ridden enough, it doesn't take him long to decide to really kill someone when a boater named Nick (Joe Turkel) attempts to blackmail him over the missing Vi. He really loses it when he seriously considers doing the same to the nine year old sister of his fiancée, who witnessed his clubbing of Nick. Poor Sandy (Susan Gordon), only a kid and she witnesses two violent deaths as Tom himself takes a header into the ocean from the same spot as Vi, poetic justice I suppose.
Watch for a couple of goofs in the final scene when the bodies of Tom and Vi are recovered from the ocean. As they're placed on the beach, Vi's arm crosses Tom's chest as if to simulate a hug, but by this time she had already been dead a week - no rigor mortis or decomposition! Also, earlier in the film, a lady named Mrs. Ellis was introduced, a friend of Tom's who was blind. But at the same beach scene, she reacts as if she sees the bodies, with a look of horror on her face.
This is the only film I've seen from director Bert I. Gordon, but judging from the comments of other reviewers, I'll have to give some of his other movies a try. Not that I'm a glutton for punishment, I try to find something positive in everything. Oddly, his daughter Susan portrayed the young girl Sandy in the film; she also appeared in one of my favorite episodes of "The Twilight Zone", as a crippled girl named Jenny who comes up with a plan to outfox a couple of policemen from another planet who arrive on Earth to bring their king back home. In retrospect, her performance may have been the best one in "Tormented".
There are actually some interesting and haunting elements to disturb Tom's psyche, the third set of footprints in the sand and the record that makes it's way over to the turntable to play itself. Those however are offset by apparitions of Vi's head talking to Tom and her disembodied hand feeling around the floor for the new girl's wedding ring, each conspiring to elicit a chuckle from the viewing audience.
As if Tom's conscience isn't guilt ridden enough, it doesn't take him long to decide to really kill someone when a boater named Nick (Joe Turkel) attempts to blackmail him over the missing Vi. He really loses it when he seriously considers doing the same to the nine year old sister of his fiancée, who witnessed his clubbing of Nick. Poor Sandy (Susan Gordon), only a kid and she witnesses two violent deaths as Tom himself takes a header into the ocean from the same spot as Vi, poetic justice I suppose.
Watch for a couple of goofs in the final scene when the bodies of Tom and Vi are recovered from the ocean. As they're placed on the beach, Vi's arm crosses Tom's chest as if to simulate a hug, but by this time she had already been dead a week - no rigor mortis or decomposition! Also, earlier in the film, a lady named Mrs. Ellis was introduced, a friend of Tom's who was blind. But at the same beach scene, she reacts as if she sees the bodies, with a look of horror on her face.
This is the only film I've seen from director Bert I. Gordon, but judging from the comments of other reviewers, I'll have to give some of his other movies a try. Not that I'm a glutton for punishment, I try to find something positive in everything. Oddly, his daughter Susan portrayed the young girl Sandy in the film; she also appeared in one of my favorite episodes of "The Twilight Zone", as a crippled girl named Jenny who comes up with a plan to outfox a couple of policemen from another planet who arrive on Earth to bring their king back home. In retrospect, her performance may have been the best one in "Tormented".