Tormented

Tormented
Blu-ray
Film Masters
1960
Starring Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Susan Gordon
Written by Bert I. Gordon, George Worthing Yates
Photographed by Ernest Laszlo
Directed by Bert I. Gordon

As a man bedeviled by the ghost of his jilted lover, Richard Carlson is feeling Tormented, and after a few minutes of this waterlogged spook show, so is the audience. Carlson plays Tom Stewart, a short-tempered jazz pianist who murders a pin-up model in order to marry the girl next door. But the spectral ex has her own ideas and launches a supernatural campaign to drive Tom out of his gourd—is he nuts or is the ghost real? Director Bert I. Gordon gives you 75 minutes to figure it out, but keep in mind those are 75 minutes you’ll never get back.

Juli Reding plays Vi Mason, the stubborn sex kitten who won’t stay dead, and the house she’s haunting is actually a lighthouse perched on a Cape Cod shoreline, a windy getaway where Tom escapes to concentrate on his music. He used to concentrate on Vi but no longer—a lover’s quarrel sent her over the tower’s guardrail and into the drink.

Stewart attempts to soldier on—he’s about to marry to Meg Hubbard, an unassuming lassie played by Lugene Sanders, and he’s planning a star-making concert at Carnegie Hall. But Vi keeps popping up at the most awkward moments—at least her body parts do; ghostly footprints in the sand, a crawling hand creeping under the couch, a disembodied head floating over the record player—no complaints, they’re awfully nice body parts, but Vi’s disembodied noggin also speaks and her incessant nagging tempts Tom to take a header off the lighthouse himself.

The musician has other problems, Meg’s little sister, 11 year-old Sandy Hubbard, has a pretty good idea that Tom killed Vi. She’s played by Susan Gordon, daughter of Bert, and with her suspicious glare and Vi’s manifestations, Tom is headed for a nervous breakdown. Then Joe Turkel enters the picture as Nick Lewis, the island’s boatman who harbors his own concerns about Vi’s fate. Turkel’s unpredictable presence lights a fire under Tom, and the movie too, but with Carlson’s morose murderer dragging his feet it’s up to Juli Reding to provide the sizzle.

Bert I. Gordon was known for his low rent but charming special effects and surely Reding’s pesky poltergeist was one of his most memorable creations. If the ghostly Juli is a dead ringer for the voluptuous glamour girls who galvanized the newsstands in glossy periodicals like Escapade and Swank, that’s because her figure was a hallmark of 50’s nudie magazines.

Born in Texas and raised in Branson, Missouri, her film career was mostly relegated to bit parts on television, and serving as “Miss Welder of 1960″and “Miss Los Angeles Dodger.” Gordon capitalizes on Reding’s sassy Marilyn Monroe qualities, yet her titillating Joie de vivre and ghostly appearance suggests a different movie entirely; Blithe Spirit directed by Russ Meyer.

Aside from Reding, the main attraction of Film Masters’s new Blu-ray release is the improved picture quality (a step up from the Warner Archive release) and a generous selection of extras. There’s a feature length commentary from Gary Rhodes and Larry Blamire, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Tormented, and an archival  interview with Bert I. Gordon, The Amazing Colossal Filmmaker.

C. Courtney Joyner hosts Bigger than Life: Bert I. Gordon in the 1950’s and 1960’s and The Flying Maciste Brothers present a visual essay titled The Spirit is Willing. Of special interest is Famous Ghost Stories, part of an unaired pilot for Gordon’s 1961 project starring Vincent Price. Tucked inside the keep case is a booklet with commentary from classic horror film historian Tom Weaver, and writer John Wooley. Wooley’s entry is a sweet remembrance of his friendship with Susan Gordon, and Tom weighs in with a snappy synopsis of the film itself and vivid excerpts from his extensive interviews with the film’s stars, including Turkel’s hair-raising comments about Richard Carlson, who apparently knew a lot about tormenting his co-stars.

Here’s Mick Garris on Tormented: