Tormented

Plot synopsis:
Tom Stewart is a successful Jazz musician who has retreated to a small island where he intends to marry a girl named Meg Hubbard. However, trouble presents itself when Tom's old flame, Vi Mason shows up looking for him. Tom quickly takes Vi to the old lighthouse on the island. Tom explains that it's over between them, but Vi claims that she intends to blackmail Tom if she can't have him. However, as they go to the top of the lighthouse, the railing gives way, and Vi hangs from it, pleading for Tom to save her. However, he refuses to, and she plunges into the waters below.The next day, Tom goes down to the beach, and sees Vi's body floating out on the water. Swimming out to it and returning it to the beach, Tom is shocked when it then turns to seaweed before his very eyes! Meg's little sister Sandy shows up shortly after wondering what Tom is doing. As he requests she leave, something in the sand catches her eye. It appears to be a watch inscribed with the name 'Vi.' Tom takes the watch from Sandy, and once she leaves, he throws it back into the ocean, claiming that's the end of Vi.Tom returns to the lighthouse, where Meg eventually finds him. As they hug, Meg swears she smell perfume. Tom quickly ushers her out of the lighthouse down to the beach. However, as they talk, Tom swears he sees footprints in the sand following them. Meg sees nothing, and is surprised when Tom suggests they return to the main land to get married. Meg refuses to do so, claiming that this would upset her parents.Tom then returns to his island apartment, but even there, strange things happen. A record player in the corner starts by itself, frightening him. The blind housekeeper Mrs Ellis stops by. As their conversation turns to talk of the supernatural, the old woman explains about a house she once rented that was said to still contain the spirit of a dead boy and his dog.Tom soon after goes to sleep, but Vi even invades his dreams. Tom wakes in the evening, to see a light in the lighthouse. Going there and finding nothing, Tom declares to Vi that he is not going to live in fear of her, and that he will marry Meg.The next day, Sandy visits Tom, who shows him the ring that he intends to give Meg. However, Tom soon sees the ring appear on Vi's disembodied hand. When he attempts to tell Sandy about it, she has no idea what he's talking about. Soon, the hand disappears, and after Sandy leaves, Tom demands the ring back, but gets no response.Later on that evening, the family goes through several of the wedding gifts that have been received. Meg then decides to show Tom her gown, but is horrified to find the gown draped in wet seaweed, as well as a strange smell of sweet perfume in the air.The next day, Tom is visited by Mrs Ellis who wishes to talk about what happened the night before. When Tom brings up word about Vi, claiming her to be an old girlfriend who he met and quarreled with, Mrs Ellis suggests that Vi may have planted the seaweed, playing tricks to get even. After she leaves, Mrs Ellis goes by the old lighthouse, where her seeing-eye dog starts barking at. Thinking Vi may be inside, Mrs Ellis enters. Vi attempts to lure the old woman up the stairs and over the broken railing, but Mrs Ellis manages to stop herself before going over.Sometime afterwards, Meg's family is preparing for the pre-wedding party. Meg and Sandy's father arrives, and while he is happy to see his daughters and wife, he is still sour at the prospect of Meg marrying a jazz musician. Sandy later goes to the lighthouse looking for Tom, but is shocked when she comes across a man looking for Tom, and finds a pendant.Shortly afterwards, the man finds Tom in his beach house. The man has come to the island looking for Vi, claiming she owed him 5 dollars for the boat trip over. The remembered Vi mentioning Tom's name, and thought he'd know where Vi is. Tom is tight-lipped about Vi, but pays the man the 5 dollars, trying to get him away. The ferry boat driver stops at a small cafe, and overhears someone talking about Tom marrying Meg, which gives him an idea.Later that evening, a small pre-wedding party is hosted. Tom is freaked out when an instant photo shows Vi's head floating near him and Meg. When Meg notices Tom's nervous demeanor, Tom confesses to knowing Vi, and finally shows her the photo...only for Meg to see no floating head in the shot as Tom mentioned. This mention of Vi causes Meg to seem rather thoughtful later on during the night.The next day, Tom attempts to practice at his piano, but is interrupted when Vi's disembodied head appears on a table. Vi claims that she will now use her voice to tell the world that Tom killed her. As she starts chanting 'Tom Stewart killed me,' Tom wraps her head in a towel and heads out the door, only to drop the head, which turns into a vase of flowers. He is the accosted by the same boat driver, who has found a locket of Vi's. When Tom attempts to take it, the man smiles, knowing he has information that Tom doesn't others to know about.Tom and the ferryman go to the lighthouse, where the ferryman tells Tom he wants $5000 as payment to be kept quiet. Tom suddenly hears Vi's voice, pushing him to kill the ferryman, and Tom does so to keep his secrets. Unknown to Tom, Sandy was in the lighthouse, and secretly witnessed the killing.The wedding is held and Vi's ghost shows up to open the door, wilt flowers, and turn the pages in the minister's book to the funeral service litany. Tom returns to the lighthouse after the failed wedding to see if Vi's ghost will appear. After seeing the light on, Sandy arrives and Tom realizes she saw him kill the ferryman. He lures her upstairs and is tempted to push her off the lighthouse, but Vi charges forward to push him off the ledge to the rocks below. Now a surprise waits when both Tom and Vi are recovered later.

Tags: murder

Review:
The first thing to notice is the photography of Ernest Laszlo, a veteran of film noir who shot the classic "D.O.A.", "Kiss Me Deadly" and Fritz Lang's "While the City Sleeps." (And the same year "Tormented" came out, he did "Inherit the Wind"!) He elevates this little ghost tale no end, with nice compositions such as the shots through broken lighthouse windows.
By the end, this cynical little flick has shown more style and imagination than several recent special-effects ghost movies..
Next thing you know her ghost is tormenting him--parts of her body appear to him (but no one else), he hears her voice, sees her in pictures and begins going crazy.
He's all set to wed a rich high society girl but first he has to get rid of his Marilyn Monroe-like mistress Vi. Things seem to turn out fine when she falls off the lighthouse but Vi comes back to haunt Tom; body part by body part.
Tormented is quite a scary ghost story from Mr Big. No giant insects in it though.On a remote island,a musician's former lover falls to her death from a lighthouse even though he could have stopped her.
He then returns to the lighthouse to confront the ghost...Despite reading bad reviews about this movie, I found it quite enjoyable and certainly scary at times.The cast includes sci-fi/horror regular Richard Carlson (It Came From Outer Space, Creature From the Black Lagoon), Mr Big's daughter Susan Gorden, Lugene Sanders, Juli Reding, Joe Turkel and Gene Roth (Earth vs the Spider).Catch this if you get the chance.
Of course, I was ten years old in 1960 and back then disembodied talking heads, mysterious winds that attack weddings and kill all the flowers, and a white-ish, translucent ghost woman who swoops directly at you was pretty decent entertainment.
Gordon's "Tormented" is a pleasant surprise that sets-up a mature, atmospheric ghost story that handles itself rather sincerely, despite it's obtrusively dodgy special effects.
Richard Carlson plays the neurotic Tom whose guilt slowly overwhelms his mind with Juli Reding's beauty turned nagging ghost Viv both turning in splendid performances.
Richard Carlson is great as the "Tormented" leading man, and Juli Reding does a good job as his dead lover, but the rest of the cast leaves something to be desired.
On the eve of his wedding to Meg (Sanders), Tom (Carlson) is confronted in a remote lighthouse by former lover, Vi (Reding).
What the film does have is beguiling little 10-year old Susan Gordon (the director's daughter) as Meg's sister.
Richard Carlson, a sturdy, reliable B-list actor, acquits himself well with this melodramatic thriller involving a jazz pianist involved in the death of his revenge-seeking ex-girlfriend; he hopes to walk away from his dirty deeds, but soon finds the dead woman's spirit haunting him (during one supernatural visit, it's just her head that appears!).
Island-set ghost story of blackmail and guilt makes up for its low-budget with some intriguing (and outrageous) ideas, also a great dilapidated lighthouse at the center of the action.
As someone else said, at first you can somewhat sympathize with Tom, but as Vi's "head" predicts, he goes from bad to worse to cover up his crime, until at the end he is contemplating the most horrific act imaginable.The acting here, except for Richard Carlson as Tom and Juli Redding as Vi, is so wooden you could build a bonfire out of the performances, but it all just fits in so well to the spartan Allied Artists early 60's horror atmosphere that I didn't mind.
Main offenders are Carlson who is a complete douchebag throughout the whole film, Susan Gordon (Sandy) who plays the young girl who acts like a grown-up and Lillian Adams (Mrs Ellis) who plays a blind landlady that knows more than sighted people do as they always seem to.The dialogue is crass but the film keeps you watching.
Tom acts like a murderer through the whole film, when in fact he's just a stupid dope who let a fatally attracted harpy fall to her death.
His shrill-voiced fiancée Meg, in a nice twist, seems more attracted to the idea of marrying a famous musician than spending her life with a man she truly loves and her annoying 9 year old little sister Sandy is nearly as obsessed with Tom as Vi was, following him around and pestering him constantly.
There's a nice moment when Vi's ghost, who has by now been established as very real and not at all the product of a guilty conscience, invades the wedding of Tom and Meg, wilting the flowers and snuffing out the candles with her cold presence and effectively destroying the nuptials before they can take place.
Barely feasible ghost story about a guy who lets his girlfriend (a self-described "second-rate singer") fall from a lighthouse to her death in the sea.
Richard Carlson is very sincere and over-acts his heart out, but the story is rancid and the rest of the cast is pretty much dead in the water trying to act with that terrible script and the awful writing.If you must see it, catch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 rendition; it's hilarious and one of their best.
A man (Richard Carlson) lets a former flame (Juli Reding) fall to her death rather than let her interfere with his new relationship, but her ghost returns to disrupt his impending nuptials.Worth noting is the work of Bill Cooley, makeup artist since the 1930s with such titles as "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Mr. Moto Takes a Chance".
A popular jazz musician (genre regular Richard Carlson) about to marry into a wealthy family is pursued to a remote island, where the wedding celebrations are to be held(!), by a former flame; needless to say, he finds her presence inconvenient and, while arguing one night up in a lighthouse(!), she accidentally falls to her death – he could have saved her if he wanted to, but obviously considered the mishap most fortuitous.
Three other important characters to figure in the narrative are the fiancée''s kid sister (the director's own daughter Susan), wise beyond her years, a blind servant woman (who recalls a similar ghostly incident at this locale) and a blackmailing beatnik boatman (Joseph Turkel) who is the only one aware of the deceased's arrival on the island and her sudden disappearance – the latter's insistence for more "bread" proves his undoing, a murder witnessed by Gordon (who sees her adulation of Carlson suddenly shattered).
The plot is actually intriguing, centering around a soon to be married bachelor Tom Stewart who is haunted by visions of his dead lover trying to stop his marriage.
Tom Stewart, a jazz pianist is going to marry a little rich girl.But Tom's lady on the side,enormous breasted Vi has come to the lighthouse where Tom hangs out.She wants Tom all to herself.She threatens to tell his fiancee' about them and has his love letters.(Too bad she doesn't have photos of herself in the buff.Yowsah!).
The scenario goes a little something like this, A man kills his wife and she comes back piece by piece to Torment him.The movie's most memorable scene is when his wife's head comes back to haunt him, taunting him to craziness.
Gordon, (who in the past Directed films like The Cyclops, Amazing Colossal Man) wrote the story and even worked on some of the special effects, which were not to bad I might say.With the obvious low-budget, it's amazing what Gordon did.
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?
After his inactivity caused his mistress' death, a jazz pianist about to be married finds the dead woman's ghost haunting him wherever he goes and forcing him to resort to increasingly violent manners to keep his actions a secret.This was a pretty disappointing and really disjointed effort.
Gordon's "Tormented" has a story that could pretty much fill any horror flick (man lets woman die and her ghost haunts him, even interfering with his wedding).
The pianist tries to keep the death quiet while proceeding with the wedding plans, but funds it impossible when the deceased singer begins to haunt him," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis."Go away, you're dead!" cries jazz pianist Richard Carlson (as Tom Stewart); but, "Tormented" ghost singer Juli Reding (as Vi Mason) just won't go away.
But unfortunately for every one concerned, TORMENTED is neither good enough to be good nor bad enough to be amusing.The story concerns Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson), a jazz pianist with an impending performance at Carnegie Hall and and upcoming marriage to wealthy socialite Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders.) Alas, he also has a woman in his past: a singer named Vi (Juli Reding), and when our story begins she has come to raise hell about his impending marriage.
Tormented is truly awful and has no redeeming qualities .Its on a weird double bill DVD with Maniac(which doesn't feature a lighthouse) and Maniac is a lot more fun.Personally I would have pushed the Vi character off the lighthouse for bad acting,and Richard Carlson did right to let her die.So maybe the one redeeming feature of Tormented is that it poses an interesting moral question.The easy way out of the problem,of course,is don't have a girl friend who is a bad actress..
The best remembered scene has to be the confrontation between Richard Carlson as the guilty man and the floating, disembodied head of the ghost, as he holds her by her long blonde hair and tries to stuff her into a bag, while the head shrieks out " Tom Stewart killed me!
The basic plot involving a jazz pianist dumping one love affair and about to marry someone else takes a turn for the worse when jilted lover Vi (Juli Redding) falls to her death from atop a lighthouse landing.
Former boyfriend Tom (Richard Carlson) could have saved her, but because he didn't, he now suffers guilt over her demise.There are actually some interesting and haunting elements to disturb Tom's psyche, the third set of footprints in the sand and the record that makes it's way over to the turntable to play itself.
Those however are offset by apparitions of Vi's head talking to Tom and her disembodied hand feeling around the floor for the new girl's wedding ring, each conspiring to elicit a chuckle from the viewing audience.As if Tom's conscience isn't guilt ridden enough, it doesn't take him long to decide to really kill someone when a boater named Nick (Joe Turkel) attempts to blackmail him over the missing Vi. He really loses it when he seriously considers doing the same to the nine year old sister of his fiancée, who witnessed his clubbing of Nick.
At this point Turkel had been directed by Stanley Kubrick twice, and years later would go on to play the ghostly bartender at the Overlook Hotel in THE SHINING.At the beginning of the story Carlson's character, Tom, is a solid, A-OK guy.
Tom sees the blonde's head in unlikely places (only Gordon knew if this was intentionally humorous, and it often is), and his own life begins to unravel and he, as we would say today, goes to the dark side of the force.Finally the wedding day comes.
Checking a box set that fellow IMDber Red-Barracuda had kindly sent me,I found a title that sounded like it would be a less than tormenting viewing.The plot:Becoming engaged to Meg Hubbard, Tom Stewart gets told by his old bit of skirt on the side Vi Mason that she will tell Hubbard about his cheating ways.
Thinking the matter is sorted,Stewart focuses on the wedding,but soon gets a ghostly torment.View on the film:Spotting the lighthouse before crashing into the low-rent Poverty Row rocks of the era, co-writer/ (with George Worthing Yates) director Bert I.
Haunted by the eerie screams Juli Reding gives Vi, Richard Carlson peels his beefcake looks off,as Stewart becomes tormented..
The film is not perfect; it's a little bit cheesy but in a good sort of way.Basically a man, Tom Stewart, is "Tormented" by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, Vi Mason, that he deliberately let die.
Vi will stop at nothing to stop Tom from marring his new sweetheart Meg Hubbard.This is a good late night movie - it has it's fair share of thrills and horrors.*************************Spoiler**************************** Tom started out kinda likable minus what happened to the irritating Vi - yet Vi was going to blackmail Tom so that puts Vi as the unlikeable at the very beginning of the film.What gets me is how Tom became a cold blooded murderer.
He got to the point he was willing to kill anyone - even 8 year old Sandy.I think Tom got exactly what he deserved in the very end.******************************************************************* Good film over all - I like it a lot.8.5/10.
In this film he plays Tom, a jazz pianist, who is engaged to Meg. Two weeks before the wedding, he breaks it off with Vi, his mistress.
He accidentally falls to his death and when his body is recovered so is Vi's.This is a pretty good film, not the maligned movie of some of the reviews.
And thanks to the DVD revolution, this near-forgotten piece of work may soon be getting some recognition for the entertaining (if minor) journey into the uncanny that it is.In the film, the viewer makes the acquaintance of a fairly well-known jazz pianist named Tom Stewart, well played by Richard Carlson.
And Tom's plight is made even more complicated when the tug skipper who had ferried Vi over to the island (although a certain Wiki site avers that the film transpires on Cape Cod, an island off the coast of California is more likely, especially in light of the fact that Meg's folks have a house in Bel Air) gets wind of what happened and demands "five thou" for his silence, and when Tom's future sister-in-law, 9-year-old Sandy (the adorable child actress Susan Gordon, who had appeared in "Attack of the Puppet People" and would appear in father Gordon's "Picture Mommy Dead" in '66), also begins to grow troublesome....So, as a ghost story, does "Tormented" provide the requisite chills?
The film, compact as it is at a mere 75 minutes, yet features a number of memorable sequences, including one in which Vi's floating head appears to Tom, taunting him with the words "Tom Stewart killed me, Tom Stewart killed me," and the one in which Vi's ghost busts into the wedding ceremony of Tom and Meg, causing all the flowers to wilt and culminating in a bloodcurdling scream from the terrified bride.
***SPOILERS*** Just when things were starting to go great for jazz pianist Tom Stewart,Richard Carlson, all of a sudden an old flame of his pooped into Tom's life.
From director Bert I Gordon, I was surprised to find in TORMENTED a rather competently made little thriller about a troubled jazz pianist whose lover falls to her death from the top of a lighthouse accidentally..hanging for dear life from the lantern room's Astral bars, Vi calls for Tom Stewart to help, and yet he allows her to fall, crashing to the rocks below.
When Tom makes a decision regarding Nick, his fiancé Meg's(Lugene Sanders) little sister, Sandy(Susan Gordon)catches him in the act only adding to an already difficult situation.
The planned wedding could be in danger as Tom's pressures at concealing a secret slowly lead him down a dark path to no return..You know director Gordon is known as a schlock filmmaker, but I think this is one of those times where the story is told in a rather effective way, although his special effects featuring Vi, the ghost, might induce chuckles, such as when her disembodied head and hand appear to him, when her ghostly apparition often pops up unannounced at inopportune times, or a photo taken featuring her face along with Tom and Meg. Unlike other films, though, they aren't as corny(..or, at least I didn't think so, but you be the judge) and the story regarding a man's sins returning to him over and over, never letting go, due to his own mistakes, isn't a bad one.
The film really starts with a thud (literally) when a beautiful woman falls to her death with a shattering scream from a lighthouse and isn't helped by the man she's involved in an argument with.
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.
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..
Tom Stewart(Richard Carlson) a would be jazz musician and entertainer of multiple female relationships, is about to be blackmailed by Vi Mason(Juli Reding) of all places an abandoned lighthouse.
2 stars out of 10, for Actors Richard Carlson,Susan Gordon, Joe Turkel,Gene Roth, as they try and make the film work, but Mr. BIG has already sealed that fate.
Idiotic jazz musician Tom Stewart kills his girlfriend, Vi, who quickly becomes the most aggravating, irritating, obnoxious ghost in the history of film.