One night, while clearly in some kind of altered state, Paul Varney (Bradford Dillman) buys an antique mirror from a store, driven to the purchase by forces he can’t quite comprehend. Some days later, leaving a get-together by friend-of-a-friend psychiatrist and occult expert Dr David Sorrell (Louis Jordan), Paul and his fiancée Barbara Anholt (Lynda Day George) have a (vintage) car accident caused by his zoning out just like he did in that night he bought the mirror. Paul is killed, while Barbara gets away with minor injuries.
Obviously, Barbara is not taking this well, and is all too happy when Paul’s mother (Marsha Hunt) decides to break off the cold war that apparently was raging between them when Paul was still alive and invites Barbara to live with her in the family’s rich people mansion. Right in Barbara’s new room is that mysterious mirror Paul bought. On her first night sleeping there, Barbara feels drawn to the mirror – and wouldn’t you know it, a version of Paul that has developed a sartorial interest in French existentialist intellectual chic appears. Barbara is as clearly overwhelmed by intense sexual desire as a TV movie from 1969 can get away with (which is surprisingly much) and she and Paul do get it on late 60s TV movie style, Barbara somehow crossing over into the mirror world with her mind while her body, as is clearly implied, has its fun with the mirror.
After the first night of this, she goes to Sorrell for help. Sorrell does go for the most logical psychological explanation of her encounter being simple grief, but a case some years ago has taught him that sometimes, strange occurrences actually have supernatural sources, and so he begins to investigate what really happened to Paul before his death. This becomes particularly pressing since the now nightly encounters between a Barbara who simply can’t resist the mirror and Paul seem to have a dire influence on her physical and mental health.
This TV movie as directed by Paul Wendkos is a real gem of TV horror, working a very effective occult detective tale into the constraints of late 60s TV. The script by Richard Alan Simmons (based upon a short story buy Guy “The Werewolf of Paris” Endore) is surprisingly inventive in the ways it mixes the TV version of grief with Barbara’s supernatural misadventures, hinting at the connections between love, grief and physical desire, without feeling the need to explain them too much. There’s surprisingly little psycho babble TV of the time loved so much here,too, or really, just as much of it as the film needs for exposition.
Fear No Evil works very well as a tale in the classic occult detective mode, Sorrell’s double-expertise as a psychiatrist and a man of occult interests making him the ideal go-between between science (as much as psychiatry is one) and belief, and position him as one of the healer type occult investigators rather than the researcher of weird shit. I’ve never been the greatest fan of Jourdan – he always feels a bit too smug to me – but his performance here is just right, with just the right mix of that smugness and believable compassion; well, and a lot of cigarettes.
The plotting is pretty neat too, for the whole affair makes sense as a proper mystery, just one involving experimental demon conjuring and a magic mirror.
Wendkos does a wonderful job, too, pacing the investigation well, getting to the core of a scene clearly and efficiently, but also creating the proper mood of the outré as part of the human experience when it is called for. He is also doing wonders creating the supernatural menace on TV budget. The climax in particular is visually and conceptually inventive and makes total sense as a lived example of magical thinking, too.
Apparently, this was a pretty big ratings success for NBC, so the next year, there was another adventure of Dr Sorrell hitting the screen, but one without Simmons or Wendkos involved. About that one, I will complain in a coming “Three Films Make a Post” entry, because it’s as terrible as Fear No Evil is great.
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