Review of How Awful About Allan

Definitely one of the best TV movies ever produced. Creepy and atmospheric. Anthony Perkins gives a fine performance as the paranoid, semi-blind Allan. Good support from Joan Hackett as his girlfriend Olive and Julie Harris as his much put-upon sister Elizabeth. The film opens with a mysterious house-fire that kills Allan's overbearing father Raymond, leaves his sister with horrible scars, and Allan himself with psychosomatic semi-blindness. Allan is treated for months at a psychiatric clinic, then judged well enough to come home (to a decidedly unenthusiastic Elizabeth). As Allan tries to readjust and come to terms with his guilt, he begins to suspect someone is trying to kill him. Is it all in his imagination? Is it the ghost of his dead father? The mysterious new student roomer named Harold Dennis? Elizabeth's former boyfriend Eric Walters who's suddenly back in town? Catch this one on TV or buy the DVD and find out!