This strange titled thriller (no matter how it's credited) has a great cast of award winning actors and a TV star who was one of the most popular of the 60's and 70's, now an acclaimed director. Ron Howard had moved from Mayberry to Milwaukee and finds his mother, Cloris Leachman (who gave him up for adoption), and begins to investigate the truth of his existence which includes a prickly widowed aunt (Patricia Neal) and a lonely seemingly boy crazy cousin (Tessa Dahl) who seems to want to seduce him even after she finds out how their related. The mysterious death of Neal's husband plays into this madness which leads to an obvious conclusion.
Reminding me of Neal's last film ("Cookie's Fortune") where Leachman lookalike Glenn Close played an estranged niece, this is trying hard to be in the Tennessee Williams/William Inge/Eugene O'Neill category of family melodrama (with an unadvised bit of Hitchcock thrown in for horror elements), this flows oddly and seems overloaded with metaphors and hints of incest.
I can see Neal and Leachman's attraction to these parts. On paper, they seem complex and meaty. But there's something really creepy among the glass menagerie like set-up that becomes just far too weird and overly theatrical, twisted too tight to the point where it becomes too much to take after a while. Unfortunately other than a phone conversation, Neal and Leachman do not share any scenes, making them even odder sisters than Jane and Blanche Hudson.
Reminding me of Neal's last film ("Cookie's Fortune") where Leachman lookalike Glenn Close played an estranged niece, this is trying hard to be in the Tennessee Williams/William Inge/Eugene O'Neill category of family melodrama (with an unadvised bit of Hitchcock thrown in for horror elements), this flows oddly and seems overloaded with metaphors and hints of incest.
I can see Neal and Leachman's attraction to these parts. On paper, they seem complex and meaty. But there's something really creepy among the glass menagerie like set-up that becomes just far too weird and overly theatrical, twisted too tight to the point where it becomes too much to take after a while. Unfortunately other than a phone conversation, Neal and Leachman do not share any scenes, making them even odder sisters than Jane and Blanche Hudson.