Monday, April 07, 2014

Movie review - "The Mind of Mr Soames" (1970) **

In the late 60s Amicus made a bunch of non horror movies in an attempt to broaden their range but none of them particularly took - this was one of them, and its ironic since the material had the basis for a good horror flick: Terence Stamp is a 30 year old man who has lived in a coma his whole life and is revived.

This sort of material worked a charm in Charly and would later be effective in Awakenings - in both those cases they would have a love story subplot and the doctor was a major character. Here there is no love story (confusing since handsome Stamp is the lead) and the sympathetic doctor character (played by Robert Vaughan) doesn't have much of a character to play.

The basic story also works as horror in Frankenstein - for it's basically the Frankenstein story. They don't go down that route either, though they hint at it. Stamp gets out of his institution, gets in a fight, charms a woman, then winds up in a barn. The filmmakers can't even go in for ironic tragedy at the end - it's all built up for Soames to cop a bullet or someone else to die, but it doesn't happen. An opportunity missed.

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