Rainey Dawn All - everyone - give outstanding performances in this terrifically terrifying story of reincarnation. I was about 3 years old when this film came out but was introduced to it as a pre-teen or teen. Anyway I saw it a handful of times as a teen and watching it again all these years later I have to say the film still gives me the chills.Peter Proud has nightmares, he seeks help in a dream clinic and later he and a friend feel he must be experiencing flashbacks of a previous life - Jeff Curtis. Peter sets off on a journey to find out who Jeff Curtis was and why he was murdered before.The film is a little graphic at times, mainly with sex, rape and murder - but that is NOT all there is to this film - it's mainly Peter "finding himself" or should I say "finding Jeff Curtis".9/10

inspectors71 I certainly think so. I've never seen anything with Kidder that didn't make me cringe with embarrassment while wanting to spritz with Holy Water.Now, let's back-track to the review I was planning to write.J. Lee Thompson's The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, based on a novel by Max S. Ehrlich, is a perfect reason for people to giggle and point at the 1970s. It's a dopey, overly-dramatic, performance-free glob of hippie-dippy spiritulalism, perfect for anyone who wants to get in touch with the silliest of the Me Decade. If you know anything at all about the Hindu belief in the journey of souls through reincarnation, don't be shocked when Hooey-wood takes the idea and turns it into a lugubrious chunk of nonsense about some rich New England dimebag who gets murdered by his wife, and his soul pops up- -for totally no reason at all--thirty years later in a young university professor.If it weren't for the mystery that Michael Sarrazin's Peter Proud has to unravel to explain his out-of-his-body-and-in-somebody-else's dreams, all we would have would be lots of naked people swimming and sexing, principal characters driving around Massachusetts in gigantic Chevrolets, everyone looking as if they are in the death throes of painful mortification, and Margot Kidder, painted up with flour in her hair to make her look old, swilling bourbon, and, I am not kidding, soaking in her bathtub while masturbating to the memory of her no-good-nik husband raping her in 1947. On occasion, there is some real mystery here, but every time the story begins to treat the audience as a group of adults--instead of dim teens--Thompson and screenwriter Ehrlich throw in some nonsense that stops everything dead in its tracks.Sarrazin goes to the house of his previous self (good time for mysteriousness, right?) and we spend more time gawping at the pudgy teenager in the tight shorts who wants to jump Peter's peter.We're adults here, right J.? Then treat us as such!By the end--and if you didn't see it coming, you must be new to movies--we're left with nothing solved but for Kidder's character's liver glowing in the dark. 105 minutes of nonsense and nothing to show for it.Unless watching Kidder play with herself is all you need in a motion picture.

AaronCapenBanner J. Lee Thompson directed this adaptation of Max Ehrlich's novel that stars Michael Sarrazin as Peter Proud, a college professor who is plagued by nightmares of a violent death in a place he's never been, but is able to track down to a city in New England where he believes he lived in a past life. He meets Marcia Curtis(played by Margot Kidder) who recognizes his voice and manner as that of her late husband, but can't believe it, though when Peter shows romantic interest in her(their?) daughter Ann(played by Jennifer O'Neill), she must take a similar drastic action just like before... Interesting premise, and nicely filmed in real New England locations, but film is ultimately too lurid, seamy, and unsatisfying to succeed, though has a most ironic end. Not yet on DVD for some reason, though is on YouTube.

mnpollio A prior commentator in the reviews section here complemented the film as being like a bad dream that stays with you and that is a perfectly apt description for the atmosphere of this strange, moody mystery/thriller revolving around the supernatural belief of reincarnation. Michael Sarrazin is an academic plagued by vivid, surreal nightmares depicting the increasingly volatile relationship between a brutal wife-beater and his increasingly fearful spouse, which culminates in his murder while out on a nocturnal skinnydip. As Sarrazin starts to investigate the roots of these bizarre dreams, he comes to realize that the players in his dream have actual real life counterparts and comes to believe that he is the reincarnation of the doomed husband. As he discovers each new piece to the puzzle, certain parts of the dream vanish giving him a sense of peace. Unfortunately, his investigations bring him into contact with the man's (his own?) daughter, played by Jennifer O'Neill, with whom he falls into a romance, as well as the murderess herself (Margot Kidder), who begins to believe that there is something off about her daughter's new boyfriend. Director J. Lee Thompson ably conveys a surreal quality to the visions/dreams and injects the film with a sense of impending catastrophe that it fails to shake even after its lead starts regaining some peace of mind. However, the reincarnation aspect brings up questions that the film fails to address or even touch on. Most glaringly, why does Sarrazin's laid-back rather docile Peter Proud share so few personality traits with his violence-prone predecessor? Peter Proud is not depicted as either a woman-beater or especially violent about much of anything, so at what point did the "soul" which inhabits his body learn its lesson? Why does Sarrazin not feel uncomfortable with the ramifications of courting and having sex with a woman who is his predecessor's daughter? Granted, they are not blood related, but there seems something a bit incestuous about the whole romance. The acting contributes to the oddity of the film. Sarrazin's overly restrained acting always seems to keep Peter Proud as an aloof character, even during his more emotional moments. It is almost as though neither he nor the film want us to get too attached to Proud and his plight lest we be upset about what the film has in store for him. O'Neill is lovely, but again the romance between she and Sarrazin is surprisingly muted. By contrast, Margot Kidder is fairly terrific as the beleaguered battered wife who thinks she has gotten away with murder only to be confronted years later by the soul of her restless husband. Her increasing paranoia and desperation in the final scenes are almost palpable. Tony Stephano also pulls off a difficult passage as the "dream" man - a guy charming enough to make us believe that Kidder would fall for him, but with a hair-trigger temper that is truly frightening. An underrated film to watch out for, especially for those interested in the unusual.