The Premonition

U.S.A. / 1975 Directed by Robert Allen Schnitzer Starring Sharon Farrell Richard Lynch Jeff Corey Color / 94 Minutes / PG Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) Guilty Pleasures

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2     7   10 = Highest Rating   Guest Review by Rod Barnett

Jude (The Sword and the Sorcerer's Richard Lynch) is a carnival clown/mime who travels across the country taking photographs of people posing in his cutout signs painted with amusing pictures. He seems to make an okay living doing this work but for the past few years he's also been using his job to locate a friend's daughter. Andrea Fletcher (Ellen Barber) gave her child up for adoption six years ago and now wants desperately to reclaim her. Andrea has let Jude think that the three of them will be able to live together as a family. In Mississippi he thinks he's finally found the girl and sends word to the anxious mom. The little girl is named Janie and is being raised by a well-to-do couple who have just relocated. The child's adoptive father, Miles Bennett (Edward Bell), is a teacher and researcher whose new job has brought the family to the area. His job involves working with female parapsychologist Dr. Jeena Kingsly (Chitra Neogy) in the study of ESP. Miles seems to be a kind of scientific disbeliever in place to question dodgy results. When Andrea attempts to abduct Janie but fails, Jude has to deal with the now obviously crazy woman. In the ensuing altercation he becomes enraged and kills Andrea. After the failed kidnapping the adoptive mother Sheri (Sharon Farrell) begins to have visions and confusing hallucinations that frighten her. These trance-like states become more pronounced until she is finally able to lead police to Andrea's body. Sheri's visions become debilitating, culminating in an attack that causes her to wreck her car on a rainy night. Injured in the crash, Janie walks away from the car on her own and wanders into the nearby carnival grounds. There Jude happens across her and decides to keep her for himself. He packs up but on the way out of town is stopped by a bizarre concert on the state capitol steps in which Dr. Kingsly is trying to get Sheri to channel Andrea's spirit to find their mutual daughter.     Yeah — this one's nuts.     Managing to be both ridiculous and boring, The Premonition is little more than a drive-in second feature that thought it was more. Ponderously produced, with an overcomplicated script, the movie at times feels as if it were two different films welded together on a bet. The two ideas are not combined well, with the visions/channeling coming off as silly most of the time (even if the effect of a rapidly freezing mirror is well done). The labored plotting that gets us enough information about Andrea to figure out the clues to what's happening to Sheri are right out of Poor Screenwriting 101. And I can't for the life of me understand why they threw in the pointless romantic attraction between Miles and Dr. Kingsly. This sloppiness is also evident in the flatness of the direction that allows some good actors to flail about hopelessly at times apparently unsure of were the camera is sitting. The editing is also no help, with many scenes that are overly long and several that could have been dropped altogether. Do we really need to watch police detective Jeff Corey walk from a boat dock all the way up to a house? The transitions from scene to scene are sometimes jarring in a way that detracts from simply following the story. More than once I was jolted out of the film by an apparently unintentionally blunt jump to another shot.     I'm glad that such an ambitious film was produced in the American south in the 1970s but my admiration ends there. I can see the outlines of what might have been a good story about the bonds of blood and love being stronger than death, but the ideas are so muddled it never connects. This is a mess of a film that only occasionally comes alive.

Media Blasters has released The Premonition on DVD under its Guilty Pleasures imprint and have given it special edition-style treatment. The film is presented letterboxed with a new "Psychotic Sound" 5.1 mix, looking and sounding pretty darned good (especially for a 30 year old low budget independently made movie). For purists the disc also includes the original Mono sound mix in both English and Spanish. The print shows a little wear but nothing distracting. The sound is good on both English tracks but there is some hard to discern dialog during crowd shots. Among the extras is a 20-minute interview with star Richard Lynch, in which he recounts what he remembers of the film and relates some interesting anecdotes. His discussion of his career is enlightening, showing the hard work that goes into making a living as an actor both on and off the screen. Lynch's kind words about The Premonition come off as a little doubtful even if the director of the film seems much surer of his movie's merits. On a commentary track Robert Allen Schnitzer relates his influences, the history of the production and spells out the details of the story for anyone who might be confused. 11/27/05

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