#the appointment

[litteraeignotae]

the appointment | marie howe

[horsemotifs]

"She worships you. Perhaps a little too much."

The Appointment (1982) dir. Lindsey C. Vickers

[advancedessence]

The Appointment (1982)

[lediableprobably]

The Appointment (1981, dir. Lindsey C. Vickers)

[lobbycards]

The Appointment, Italian lobby card (fotobusta). 1969

[cor-ardens-archive]

[anhed-nia]

I saw this movie weeks ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, even though I've also had trouble figuring out what to say about it. It's hard to even pin down the genre; it's sort of a horror movie, or maybe it's more of a psychodrama with magic realist elements. The opening and climax are absolutely stunning, real feats of spectacle and shocking in their content, while the middle is this strange, elliptical blend of dramaturgy and dream sequence. A business trip forces Edward Woodward to miss his precocious teenage daughter Samantha Weysom's violin recital, which insult fills their household with an unbearable tension. Only the cynical matriarch Jane Merrow perceives the neurotic underpinnings of this situation, as Woodward is too sure of himself and too far under the spell of his eccentric child to grasp the unseemly thing that is happening between them. The fact that it is writer-director Lindsay Vickers' only feature is incredible. To say more about it would spoil how surprising it is, and in any case I'm still chewing on it. Maybe I'll try to say something less ponderous next Blogtober, but for now I can tell you that there's a BFI blu ray of it, so you don't have to hunt down a rare and expensive VHS tape anymore. Thanks to @still-single for turning me onto this one!

Here's a little more info for the curious:

The vanishing British horror: unearthing The Appointment

The Wicker Man star Edward Woodward headlines this story of strange psychic forces from the start of the video nasty era. But since its rele