Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302919578
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6302919576
Label: Homevision
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Homevision
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Homevision
Release Date: 2002-02-19
Running Time: 115
Studio: Homevision
Theatrical Release Date: 1964-11-05

Bryan Forbes creates an atmosphere of unrelenting suspense in the eerie tale of a professional medium who convinces her weak-willed husband to kidnap a wealthy child for ransom. The fame and publicity she desperately craves will be hers when she helps the police find the child through a seance. The tension and suspense build to a painful level in Seance on a Wet Afternoon, which brought wide acclaim to Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough for their superlative acting.
Aside from boasting one of the great evocative titles in film history, Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) works up a surplus of dread with a minimum of devices. Kim Stanley was nominated for an Oscar^® for her performance as a London medium who bulldozes her weak husband (Richard Attenborough) into kidnapping a little girl; the goal is not ransom money, but a chance to prove Stanley's clairvoyant gifts to the police, and thus bring her the respect she has always deserved. The suspense is keen, yet the movie's real achievement is detailing the stifling marriage between two deluded, dependent middle-aged people. Attenborough is heartbreaking as a human doormat, and Stanley's Method intensity brings the movie into a genuinely unnerving realm (she didn't work in movies again for nearly two decades). The story was remade, with intriguing changes, by Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa as Séance (a.k.a. Korei, 2000). --Robert Horton

Customer Rating:
Summary: Underseen Classic
Comment: This is perhaps the best film of its type, a low-key classic too few have seen.

Kim Stanley (who tends to remind me of her pal, Geraldine Page) gives a bravura and highly-textured performance here as a psychic medium, who may or may not have legitimate powers but elects to go about publicly proving them by deceitful methods by having her husband kidnap a little girl from a prominent London family, hold her captive, and then "find" her.

This is an acting tour de force as well as a fab mood-piece, with an appropriately eerie score by John Barry, the film and London itself wrapped in an unnerving Cold War chill.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: GHOULIES,GOBLINS FROM LAST HALLOWEEN! SEND US A MESSAGE WITH YOUR TAMBORINE!
Comment: Stanley(No! Not Paul) and Attenborough are magnificent
in this downbeat psychological THRILLER! Stanley(Lick it
up! Lick it up.AGHHH AGHH AGHH C'MON,C'MON..NO Clint! Not
that Stanley!) is a fraud medium who arranges for husband
Attenborough to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter
so that she can later use her psychic "power' to find her.
Things go TERRIBLY wrong,however,when the child dies and
hubby wants out of his wife's schemes. A beautifully maintained
air of tension and suspicion,great photography,fantastic acting
all add up to make this one of the top THRILLER'S of the 60's.
Lovers of H.G.LEWIS and UMBERTO LENZI look elsewhere. But
lovers of Rosemary's Baby - Don't Look Now and The Vanishing(88)
this may be your cup of blood!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Compelling.
Comment: Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964)

Bryan Forbes' name may be on the marquee, but in retrospect, it is the style of producer and star Richard Attenborough that is writ large over this film. Presaging Attenborough's magnum opus, Magic, Séance on a Wet Afternoon travels down a lot of the same roads-- perhaps with not as much satisfaction, but as effectively in places.

Attenborough plays Philip Savage, the henpecked but well-meaning husband of Myra (Kim Stanley), who desperately wants to believe she's a medium. She is having difficulty overcoming the death of their son Arthur, whom Myra is convinced is speaking to her from beyond the grave. In order to prove herself-- make a name for herself, as it were, in the world of the mundane-- Myra hatches a nefarious plot into which she draws her husband-- kidnapping a child, then approaching the family as someone with helpful information about their missing daughter.

Watching this film over forty years after its initial release, it's easy to see how much influence it's had over the years; its particular plot twists have found their way into films ranging from Attenborough's own later works to wonderful (and, I'm sure, not-so-wonderful) films from around the world. (Certain scenes should especially put you in mind of Hideo Nakata's finest film, Chaos, for example.) While Séance on a Wet Afternoon never reaches the cinematic heights to be found when Attenborough got behind the camera himself-- the film even devolves to melodrama now and then-- it's still quite a satisfying little journey into the world of psychological suspense. The DVD suffers from a relatively nasty version of the same sound-mastering problem that plagues most DVDs (the soundtrack is mixed much louder than the dialogue track), but that shouldn't stop you from giving it a spin; you'll just find yourself using your remote's volume control a good deal more than usual. *** ½

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Oh, You Gotta Rent This !
Comment: I came across with this movie all by chance and it certainly became one of my all-time favorites. Beyond everything else this movie is SOOOO well-done. It truly satisfies in every aspect. The economy that the director used in telling this story i think is just perfect.

It's sad, it's haunting, it's gripping, thick with magnificent ambient dread and it features 2 mind-blowing performances by the leads. It's really hard to decide which actor is better but i'd say you HAVE TO SEE Kim Stanley's superb work to believe it! I was blown away!

If you like off-beat, eerie movies with solid stories and tour de force acting you surely will love this one! Do not hesitate to rent it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Tell me you love me..."
Comment: This is an exquisite little movie, made unforgettable by its two talented stars. Kim Stanley plays Myra, a woman who became delusional years ago when her only child was still born. She now claims that she's a psychic medium and that Arthur, her son, speaks to her from beyond. She's married to Billy (Richard Attenborough), a weak and brokenhearted man who knows his wife is mentally ill, but is unable to help her. They decide to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy couple, collect the ransom, and then Myra will offer her psychic services to the couple and heroically "find" the little girl. Billy knows it's a bad plan, and he's even more worried when Arthur "tells" Myra that he wants the little girl to join him.

Set in a big, dark house in London, the movie is certainly creepy and suspenseful, but more than anything, it is achingly sad. We feel for the suffering parents of the girl, for Myra, who doesn't know she is insane, and especially for Billy, who has lost control of his life completely. Richard Attenborourgh's performance is a master class in the art of acting. A sobering, insightful study of two unhappy people.

Kona

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