The Medium
"For the first time in the medium of the motion picture comes the full power of music and drama!"
Madame Flora is terrified when she perceives a supernatural presence during one of her fraudulent séances...
"For the first time in the medium of the motion picture comes the full power of music and drama!"
Madame Flora is terrified when she perceives a supernatural presence during one of her fraudulent séances...
Marie Powers
Madame Flora
Belva Kibler
Mrs. Nolan
Beverly Dame
Mrs. Gobineau
Donald Morgan
Mr. Gobineau
Anna Maria Alberghetti
Monica
Leo Coleman
Toby
Madame Flora is terrified when she perceives a supernatural presence during one of her fraudulent séances...
I’d never heard of Marie Powers before watching this curious hybrid of a film, but she definitely earned her fee here as she offers a compelling operatic performance as the slightly crooked medium “Madame Flora” who has been fleecing the gullible quite successfully for quite a while before, well a bit like Noël Coward’s “Madame Arcati”, she happens on the real thing and it’s a malevolent and mischievous entity determined to cause it’s own brand of intense havoc and induce quite a degree of introspection and even guilt from our now slightly freaked out conduit to the spirit world. It’s that intensity that Gian Carlo Menotti has managed to capture impressively here coupled with a little comedy and some powerful arias from an entertaining, if a little contrived, libretto that I think would present well on a grand theatrical stage. As to cinema? Well on that front this falls down a bit. The quality of the film-making is frankly rather poor and Menotti doesn’t really seem to appreciate the opportunities and limitations of celluloid when it comes to telling his story. The dim and dingy lighting works well for a while but soon becomes a little too dreary - as if it were filmed in a cave, and the quality of the audio which is so crucial to the storytelling here renders it quite hard to follow at times, especially if you are not a native Italian speaker. That said, it is innovative and the score can hit the heights of the rousing and stimulating powerfully so it it’s worth a watch, but you might have to be patient with it.
In the town of Normal Valley, an eccentric magician named Maestro entertains the local children every day in his spooky mansion. One stormy night, the town's mayor leads a group of angry citizens to the mansion in an attempt to run Maestro out of town.
Ghost is an ideological musician and leader of a jazz band who would rather play his blues in the park to the birds than compromise himself. His peripatetic performances lead him to cross paths with a singer, while his masculinity is thrown into question following a violent brawl.
When awkward teen Ronald Wilby accidentally kills a young girl whose sister rejected his affections, his overbearing mother decides to hide him from the law by creating a concealed room in their home for him to live.
In 1950s Australia, young Celia is growing up with a sense of isolation and mistrust of the world that surrounds her. Her mother and father won't let her play with the kids next door because their parents are communists. Then her pet bunny is taken away because of rabbit overpopulation. And, more traumatizing yet, when her grandmother dies, she's the one to discover the corpse. To cope, she retreats into elaborate fantasies.
A research team from an electronics company move into an old Victorian house to start work on finding a new recording medium. When team member Jill Greeley witnesses a ghost, team director Peter Brock decides not only to analyse the apparition, which he believes is a psychic impression trapped in a stone wall (dubbed a "stone tape"), but to exorcise it too - with terrifying results...
A czarist captain stops at nothing to learn the secrets of a countess rumored to have sold her soul to the devil in order to always win at cards.
A married couple on the brink of divorce becomes trapped in quicksand while hiking through a Colombian rainforest. It’s a struggle for survival as they battle the elements of the jungle and must work together in order to escape.
During a routine case in L.A., NY private investigator Harry D'Amour stumbles over members of a fanatic cult who are preparing for the resurrection of their leader Nix, a powerful magician who was killed 13 years earlier.
Six children are found spread through out the world that not only have enormous intelligence, but identical intelligence and have a strange bond to each other.
Verden Fell is shattered after the death of his lovely wife. But, after an unexpected encounter with Lady Rowena Trevanion, Fell soon finds himself married again. Nevertheless, his late wife's spirit seems to hang over the dilapidated abbey that Fell shares with his new bride. Lady Rowena senses that something is amiss and, when she investigates, makes a horrifying discovery -- learning that Fell's dead wife is closer than she ever imagined possible.