Writer/director Bert I. Gordon (Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods) steps away from giant insects and mutated monsters to bring us the supernatural horror/thriller Tormented. Released in 1960 by Allied Artist Picture Corporation, formerly known as Monogram Pictures (of Poverty Row fame), Tormented stars Richard Carlson, Lugene Sanders and the seductive Juli Reding. This low-budget spooker is a cult classic and is much better than the crew at MST3K make it out to be.
Buy Tormented Blu-rayTom is a struggling jazz pianist now residing on an island where the rich go to play. Tom’s living pretty easy while trying to compose his next platter. He’s even landed a sweet young chick named Meg that he’ll marry in a week’s time. There’s just one hiccup, his ex lover Vi. She has turned up to claim her man and will resort to blackmail to keep him. Unfortunately for Vi, as she and Tom quarrel atop a lighthouse, she falls to her death on the rocks below. Tom could have saved her if he had just reacted sooner but he balked thinking her demise would rid him of the trouble she could cause.
The next day Tom tries to find Vi’s body and thinks he has but it turns out he’s only dragged a bundle of seaweed from the current. Tom’s conscience begins to crumble and his mind keeps playing tricks on him as he sees Vi’s spectral form at every turn, tormenting and manipulating him into further madness. The more Tom tries to deny Vi’s existence the more she haunts him; not only appearing when Tom is alone but when he’s with his finance Meg. Vi is there as they walk the sandy beach in the form of a third set of footprints. Her floating head is in party pictures where he and Meg share a candid moment. The situation intensifies when the shady, jive-talking, boat captain hired to transport Vi to and from the island pops up threatening to blackmail Tom as well now that he’s become hip to Vi’s strange disappearance. As the wedding day looms nearer, Vi turns up her torture, driving Tom to murder and his own tragic end; an end where he will forever remain in her embrace.
For a low-budget affair, Tormented isn’t bad at all; there are definitely way worse movies out there. Bert I. Gordon deserves credit for keeping this one a moody, dark look at anxiety and madness. As with most of Gordon’s pictures, this one has some decent optical special effects as well as some crude ones and of course, there are plot holes but what would low-budget horror be with them? The acting from the supporting cast that includes a very young Susan Gordon is solid overall. That said, Joe Turkel (Lloyd the bartender in The Shining [1980]) steals the show (sexy Reding aside) as the sleazy, beat-lingo spouting, blackmailing boat captain, Also if you listen carefully, you’ll notice that the voice of Meg’s father is dubbed by Disney’s Ghost Host, Paul Frees.
This Special Edition from Gemini Entertainment includes an alternate Famous Ghost Stories version of the movie. Turns out this is actually just a slightly edited version of the movie shown on TV as a pilot for a failed series with Vincent Price adding an intro and outro as he stands in front of a spooky house. There’s also a Bert I. Gordon Trailer Reel which highlights some of Gordon’s better features. The Digital Liner Notes provide a short overview of Gordon’s career which spanned decades running from the early 1950s to 2015.
The Tormented Special Edition presents a clear print of this cult classic and is a must have for fans of Bert I. Gordon and his drive-in master works.
