Richard Chatten Richard Carlson always looked worried at the best of times, and he sure has plenty to worry about here. In the hands of a really creative director some of the shock scenes in this film - as when Carlson's dead mistress gatecrashes his wedding - could have made this a classic. Instead it has Bert I. Gordon (who turns 95 in a couple of weeks) - the very poor man's William Castle - whose direction ironically manages to be both over-emphatic (exacerbated by an annoyingly noisy jazz score lifted from Castle's 'House on Haunted Hill') while failing to generate real atmosphere. But it holds your attention for the duration and you settle down to enjoy the ride in pleasurable anticipation of the next shock effect that you know is just round the corner.Gordon (like Castle) obviously saw and was impressed by Clouzot's 'Les Diaboliques', and probably knows his Poe, since the plot in places strongly recalls the 'The Tell-Tale Heart', while the basic premise of a jealous dead lover who won't lie down anticipates Roger Corman's 'The Tomb of Ligeia' (1964). (The presence of Joseph Turkel - now 90 years old - similarly evokes memories of his spine-chilling presence twenty years later as Lloyd the bartender in Kubrick's 'The Shining'.) As the discarded Vi, Juli Reding is already scary enough when still alive, as a ghost she's in her element arranging nasty surprises like cattily dumping wet seaweed on her rival's wedding dress.

dougdoepke The final 10-minutes or so amounts to a neat wrinkle I didn't see coming. Too bad the rest of the ghost film is so utterly pedestrian. On the eve of his wedding to Meg (Sanders), Tom (Carlson) is confronted in a remote lighthouse by former lover, Vi (Reding). Unwilling to give up prospects of marrying into wealth, Tom allows Vi to fall into the ocean below, refusing to help as she dangles from the tower. Now he's haunted by her ghost, even as he continues his wedding plans.In my view, the material really needs a visual stylist to complement the spooky premise. As is, Director Gordon films in flat, high-key style thereby undercutting the eerie premise. Add a ghost who resembles Marilyn Monroe at her softest, and I was anything but repelled or even unsettled. Unfortunately, the occasional apparitions are about as scary as over-exposed film, which the effect likely is. If the writers were reaching for some kind of ghostly novelty, they got it, but at the movie's expense. Cast against type, a 50-year old wholesome Carlson fails to show much needed shadow of his own, and as a jazz musician and swain of a 20- year old cutie, he's a stretch. What the film does have is beguiling little 10-year old Susan Gordon (the director's daughter) as Meg's sister. She manages to steal the film in unobtrusive fashion unlike many Hollywood moppets. Also, catch Joe Turkel as the jive talking boat captain, apparently on loan from Kubrick and his iconic role in The Shining (1980). Otherwise, the 75-minutes amounts to an all-too-real bust, bombshell ghost or no.

BA_Harrison Jazz pianist Tom is a hit with the girls: not only is he all set to marry pretty young blonde Meg (who is quite the catch, coming from a very wealthy family) but he's also being pestered by voluptuous ex-flame Vi, who is still besotted with the musician. Hell, even his fiancé's 9 year old sister wants a piece of the smooth ivory tickler!In a last ditch effort to win back her man, Vi tracks down Tom to a derelict lighthouse where she threatens to reveal some of the jazz player's dirty secrets unless he comes back to her; during the ensuing heated argument, Vi leans against a faulty railing and is left hanging on for her life over jagged rocks. Despite her pleas for help, Tom leaves her to fall to her death, a course of action he begins to regret when her spirit comes back to haunt him.Tormented, a silly but still rather fun supernatural flick from legendary B-movie director Bert I. Gordon, also goes by the title 'Tormented... by the She-Ghost of Haunted Island!' which gives a much better idea of the cheezy goodness to be found within. The ghost effects are mostly crude and consequently very amusing, the dialogue is hilarious (especially Joe Turkel as a creepy tugboat captain who spouts beatnik slang) and the plot quite ridiculous. There are occasional hints of genuine creepiness, such as the scene in which a record repeatedly plays by itself, but a loud and crazy jazz soundtrack generally detracts from whatever spooky atmosphere there might otherwise have been.After the extreme tackiness of all that has gone before—the disembodied head, the crawling hand, the moaning spectre—Tormented's wonderfully downbeat ending comes as something of a (welcome) surprise: Tom considers killing his fiancé's young sister, falls from the lighthouse, and is reunited in death with Vi, whose corpse is discovered wearing the wedding ring that Tom had bought for Meg.

kai ringler this wasn't the worst movie ever made, but for me it was shall we say not enough action or intrigue. the ghost touches very nice, and the death scene at the beginning of the movie was pretty cool,, as our main character looks to wed his fiancé he has one problem,, he needs to get rid of his wife,, well no more worries she falls off of the balcony f? rom the lighthouse,, only problem is now is that he is haunted by her,, body part, by body part.. the interesting part of the movie I thought is how the little girl finds out what our main character has done and I asked to keep a secret by the man, will she ? well you will just have to watch,, to think that our leading man is gonna trust a child with such a dark gruesome horrifying secret Is unimaginable to me.