The Medusa Touch

Plot synopsis:
Chaos and destruction are all around as crews continue the clean up from an airliner crash city center last night. Tonight, we find ourselves in writer John Morlar's (Richard Burton) apartment, as he intently watches TV coverage of a NASA space mission going awry. As his intense eyes stare at the impending doom for the astronauts, his chair is suddenly spun around and his head is repeatedly and brutally beaten by an attacker from behind camera. Just prior to the beating, Morlar's eyes look right into the attacker's and he calmly says "a response at last".An investigation into the beating death has the detectives shocked to find that Morlar has survived barely, and they rush him to the hospital. He has his head totally bandaged (except for eyes and nose) and is plugged into multiple machines and monitors, hoses, tubes, etc. Obviously he is in the ICU, and here he stays for the rest of the movie.We follow the detectives' investigation into the beating at Morlar's apartment; how he lives, gets along with neighbors, his traits; his artwork, furnishings, his writings, etc. His writings are cryptic, obscure, dark and ominous, dealing with many past catastrophies and disasters. The detectives find that Morlar had been seeing a psychologist.They find the psychologist, Dr. Zonfeld (Lee Remmick) and try to discover what's up with Morlar. They find that he felt like he had some kind of power to create catastrophe. Zonfeld doesn't give much to the detectives other than to state he was delusional, so they go back to the apartment and hospital to dig up some more info.Morlar's hand trembles and he's given a pencil...he writes a warning about the old cathedral wall, which had been cracking lately, causing much worry about a collapse. Detectives think there is more to learn from Zonfeld.From this next visit to Zonfeld, the story is told through flashbacks from Zonfeld's and Morlar's points of view while she was interviewing, analyzing Morlar. She reveals that he felt he had caused the deaths of many people that had wronged him in the past. His nanny, his parents, his school professor, his estranged wife and her boyfriend. He felt that he learned that he could cause almost any type of catastrophe. She still claimed to the detectives that she felt it was all in his head, a delusion. She seems disinterested in his case and makes the police feel that there was no worry from her about the validity of his claims.Morlar's almost flatline brain activity ocasiionally gets a blip or two when his hand wants to warn of the collapse of the wall, so the detectives really watch him close. A bit more pressure on Zonfeld, and she accompanies the police to the hospital. Seing Morlar causes her to confess that Morlar's claims had begun to seem possible, and he had actually gotten her to come to his apartment. She witnessed him stare at the airliner as it took off, and watched it fly straight into the city center as he stared it to it's death.The detective believes now that Zonfeld has more to do with this, and goes back to her place the next day, to find her dead, from a self-induced injection. She left a taped confession that she had tried to kill him, to prevent the space disaster, but had failed. She has now convinced the detective that Morlar could cause these disasters.As police watch morlar in the hospital, the cathedral wall begins to crumble just as the Queen is arriving for a visit. Police rush all around trying to prevent death and destruction, but only our detective knows what is the cause. He rushes back to the hospital to remove the life support from Morlar. As Morlar's little jiggles and wiggles on the brain monitor fade, the falling cathedral catastrophe wanes and we sigh relief that it has all ended.The police look at Morlar's flatlined body, and are about to leave when the EEG monitor begins to make creepy squeaky sounds, and the flatline becomes very active. Then we look at Morlar's bandaged face, as his intense eyes open wide.

Tags: paranormal, murder

Review:
It's a slow burn type of story, and the filmmakers were much more concerned with building a creepy atmosphere than bombarding us with CGI effects, blood and gore, and whatever else passes for supernatural horror these days.Besides, Richard Burton on a bad day is better than most actors at their best.
The Medusa Touch is a methodically paced thriller, aimed at genre fans who enjoy a more thoughtful kind of horror film.
The late Richard Burton plays an obsessed psychic who tries to convince a psychiatrist (Lee Remick) of his demonic power to kill people and to cause disasters just by the strength of his thoughts.
French cop Lino Ventura, working as a guest policeman in London, tries to find out the mystery of Burton's dark life.Although there's not much action, this horror movie is thrilling and dominated by the convincing performances of the actors.
Burton was obviously intimately familiar with the text as his rendition of Morlar is, to say the least, riveting.The apocryphal elements added by the director, the cataclysmic disasters vastly improve the story's big-screen appeal, even if they were a bit of a departure from the text.
These things along with an excellent rendition of a sensational, compelling story make the Medusa Touch one of the best suspense films ever..
The build up to the film is superb as is the actual way the French investigator (Leo Ventura) goes about investigating Morlar's (Burton) death.
Back then it was really scary, but even today - when we're blessed (or cursed) with visual effects that are so convincing - it is still capable of sending a shiver up my spine.The film's pace is methodical, but Richard Burton admirably conveys a sense of quiet menace as he loses his grip on sanity during a series of flashbacks.
The Medusa Touch is the fantastic story of a middle age English man tormented by the terrifying revelation, he is responsible for the the world's disasters.
Richard Burton gives an impressive performance as writer John Morlar, who is brutally murdered and left for dead.
The case is investigated by French Inspector Brunel (Supurbly played by Lino Ventura) who is convinced, Morlar's personal psychiatrist, Doctor Zonfeld (Lee Remick in one of her finest roles), is harboring a horrifying secret which eventually engulfs them both.
This is the sort of movie that could only be British made.....with its cavalcade of great character actors, slightly dodgy special effects and bravura it's well worth watching.
Richard Burton has lots of fun as a man cursed with the power 'To create catastrophe 'and Lee Remick is the psychiatrist who has to convince him he's got a fertile imagination and that he should relax a little.After all how many horror films start with the main character getting his head bashed in, goes from there to the aftermath of a plane crash in central London, segues neatly through burning schools, failing space missions, goes back to the events leading upto the plane crash, quickly darts over to a cathedral collapsing and then builds to a crescendo where........nah, that'd ruin it for you.
Watch it , there's so much going on in this film it's like watching one of those Amicus compilation movies, with several stories within the main plot.
It'll never win any Oscars or credits from film luvvies but it is entertaining, it has a great soundtrack, all the cast give good performances and Lee Remick looks scared as only she could!.
An unusually rigid, dark and hazy telekinetic crossed disaster driven supernatural-thriller, predictably told and methodically directed, but the spectacle starts out like a cerebral murder-mystery before the bleak, schlocky mayhem bursts from the seams.
give or take.The story follows a French detective Brunel (Lino Ventura who's great here) on temporary assignment for Scotland yard, as he investigates the attempted murder of a writer, John Morlar, who now lays comatose in a hospital bed.
He learns from Morlar's psychiatrist Dr Zonfeld (a really cold Lee Remick), and Morlar's journals, he believed he could predict the future, and eventually cause disasters, or even death.This leads to a lot of red herrings, where motivations are unravelled through Brunel's consistent digging of the facts, although it's not hard to figure who was the attempted murderer.
Well, they're right, but he's positively wooden here compared to his histrionics in Exorcist II The Heretic.Burton was a superb actor, with the best speaking voice this side of Lee Marvin, who squandered his enormous talent on a string of second-rate movies and an awful lot of whisky.
But don't let that put you off watching The Medusa Touch, a thought-provoking, and thoughtful thriller that poses some uncomfortable questions about the nature of evil, and man's place in a world seemingly abandoned by God.
A bit of a curate's egg, this movie...common sense tells you that you should scoff at the ridiculous premise, overacting and clunky effects, but somehow, you don't.Burton is excellent as Morlar, and the supporting cast are interesting enough...save poor Lee Remick who just doesn't have the depth to flesh out her character.
His presence alone, like his character's terrible power, carries the film even when Morlar is lying in a coma for the entire duration of the movie.
Their dynamic throughout the movie forces you at the edge of your seat, making you think and feel what the characters are supposed to feel.I admit I saw this film as a child and, as such, my personality has been shaped by it.
I also feel the pain of missing actors like Richard Burton and even Lino Ventura and Lee Remick.
Lino Ventura (his presence on the British police force amusingly attributed to an exchange program with the French) comes in to investigate after Burton's Morlar is attacked in his home and left for dead - the film dramatizes the fruits of his investigation in flashback, interspersed with the growing anxiety as Morlar clings to life against all odds, his malicious capacities and intents possibly intact.
The extensive use of other establishment actors in small parts, the alertness to time and place, and the breadth of Morlar's fury (encompassing the family, the education system, the law, the church, etc.) gives the film an unlikely symbolic force, allowing the character to embody whatever undiagnosed or unaddressed ills are slowly poisoning us.
With an extraordinary stage presence and a baritone voice so pleasant he could read the phone book and get a standing ovation, RICHARD BURTON would make even the dullest movies interesting (the exception that proves the rule being the dreadful 1977 Exorcist-sequel, THE HERETIC).Legendary for his two turbulent marriages to Liz Taylor, this Welsh Wonder of the World ranks up there with the giants of British film and theatre, but sadly so did his health.
So what better part for this man, than the starring role in THE MEDUSA TOUCH, playing a writer living in horror convinced that he can murder people just by thinking about it!Most critics strongly dismissed this film upon its release in 1978.
In retrospect I guess it's easy to see why a movie like this would seem silly, almost archaic at the time, especially as it was following gritty classics like Deliverance, The French Connection, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and beautiful spectacles like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.Seen with 21st Century goggles however it's near impossible not to enjoy what is going on here.
THE MEDUSA TOUCH starts out with a brutal murder, takes on the shape of a police procedural, then flirts more and more with the supernatural, before moving into possible Sci-Fi territory and finally punching you in the face with scenes of both Action and Horror!"Horror" in this case meaning closer to Hammer House than it does the cynical US horror movies of the era (just so I don't get any angry messages from people who were expecting ROSEMARY'S BABY or THE SHINING).THE MEDUSA TOUCH has plenty of quirks and odd twists along the way, even a suicide-scene sprinkled with comedy, but this just adds to the fun, the end result being a movie quite unlike anything else.
Other people might want to punch the screen, and I would pity them for taking their movies so seriously.Italian veteran actor Lino Ventura is a fun choice co-starring as the French (!) police detective who has to figure out what is real and what's not.
Richard Burton's voice is unsurpassed so it is quite a blow that he is for a loss of words after meeting Napoleon in the 3rd minute of this film.But than Lino Ventura steps in, the actor who can play any role without loosing his 'friendly-dog' look in his eyes.This is no horror-film, as a Halloween-parody shot clearly states, but a thriller which tries to creep under your skin.Richard Burton, after the Voice ('cos he does speak in this picture) and his Looks (no leading lady could resist him, as the legend goes, but did anyone tell Lee Remick that ?) now adds his Eyes to his capturing features.
The opening scene is compulsory, but some disaster footage later in the movie would have been even more effective if it had been implied, rather than shown.Overall, a fairly effective and relatively bloodless horror film..
Have just watched TMT (screened on talking pictures) for the first time in many years....like other reviewers...remember it from thirty or more years ago....an effective and chilling little psychological thriller that lingers in the mind....all performances are good but of course Burton's compelling performance as Morlar (although not on screen that long) carries the film........however one question on plot remains with me....on several occasions in Morlars notes he mentions 'L'.
Devilish, determined, destructive, manipulative, all these are descriptive of Richard Burton's character John Morlar who killed his parents, nanny and many others apparently by the force of his will.
The film was much better than I expected, for it kept my mind working along with that of the main character and the police inspector who was always a few steps behind and the doctor who was even further behind until the very end.
That is the power, the talent, the ham of The Medusa Touch, which smacks of The Pink Panther meets The French Connection -- it never knows how seriously it should take itself, it doesn't know if it's a drama or a parody, and the cheap thrills take so long to unfold that they end up costing quite a lot in terms of time and plot credibility.
But the final unavoidable sequence, in which Richard Burton does what his career could never do after this and fights to stave off death, makes the film worth the cold chicken and warm beer I found waiting for me -- and if that isn't the mark of a gloriously average movie, what is?.
Lee Remick makes for an attractive shrink though she lacks the depth and Leno Ventura is great as the French detective whose sympathies are suspect.It's all a kind of anthropological Sci-Fi, with Burton as the next step in the evolutionary process.
Sometimes when a movie is centered around only 1 or 2 characters it is hard to captivate the audience but Medusa Touch even though slow moving at times it keeps you on the edge wanting more especially as you close in on the finale.
John Morlar, a misanthropic writer played by Richard Burton, is a man who thinks he can create disasters.
the presence of a remarkable cast - Lee Remick, Richard Burton and Lino Ventura, the short presence of Michael Hordern and Derek Jacobi, the image and the dialog rhythm are perfect bricks for a story about a kind of Raskolnikoff and his new form of justice.
On investigating the attempted murder of a controversial author, a detective contemplates the possibility of supernatural forces at work.Over earnest psychic thriller that really pulls out all the stops, with some big stars and a great big climax.
I Don't Get The Hype Over It. I don't get what is so special about this film - other than the fact that Richard Burton is starring.
Ending is interesting but a pity the intrigue, mystery and menace could not be sustained throughout the movie.Great performance by Richard Burton in the lead role.
The movie is extremely slow, nothing happens, the story sucks(a man with the curse to do evil things just by the power of his mind!?), the actors are even worse, the script is ultra-lame, the direction is stiff and useless, the dialogue is useless.
I am not 100% why he thought this...it's not really good but it's not that bad either.The film begins with Morlar (Richard Burton) getting bludgeoned.
The trail takes them to the man's psychotherapist (Lee Remick) and she recounts a strange story about Morlar thinking he had the ability to use his mind to cause the deaths of folks he didn't like.
The man investigating the case (Lino Ventura) eventually comes to the determination that perhaps the man in the coma is actually a super- being...someone who does possess strange supernatural powers.This is a decent enough film but the premise itself seems better than the actual movie.
Richard Burton makes this film worth seeing..
"The Medusa Touch" has many effective scenes but the films rather modest budget works against the production.
That is the character Richard Burton plays and his performance is very good.
Lee Remick has a good part to play as the character who befriends Burton in the film.
That premise sounds like a potentially good thriller, but the vast majority of the movie is spent trying to convince the leads that Richard Burton really is responsible for the disasters he's claiming credit for.
However, it is far from clear to me if the movie succeeds thanks to or in spite of Richard Burton, who plays the role of Morlar.
That gruesome telekinetic man bent on destroying civilization gave me the creeps.Later (it's one of the mystery movies broadcast quite regularly on German TV) I discovered the (sometimes fine, sometimes crude) satirical humor of this picture.I believe this one of the best performances of Richard Burton - just look in his eyes while he rants against bigotry or starts his crusade against what he considers sick or decadent.
The film is perfectly cast: Richard Burton with his commanding voice and piercing eyes, the classy, beautiful, intelligent Lee Remick, the instantly likable Lino Ventura.
"I'm not terribly pro-establishment," says veteran TV and film director Jack Gold, and a glance at his CV confirms it; from 1973's The National Health to The Naked Civil Servant and the anti-Thatcherite Good And Bad At Games, Gold's output tends to reflect the nation's malaise during any given decade.Of Richard Burton's destructive nihilist John Morlar, Gold professes, "I agree with his opinions"; sentiments with which original audiences might also have concurred.
Nah. As the film ends, Morlar (whose very name suggests a cross between a decaying tooth and a subterranean cellar-dweller) falteringly scrawls the name of his next target on a notepad beside his bed: "Windscale." Ouch.Aside from the cultural anachronisms (""I was expecting a man!" a surprised Brunel tells Doctor Zonfeld), and a high-level conspiracy subplot that goes nowhere, The Medusa Touch feels surprisingly fresh, even contemporary, with its ghastly scene of a jet slamming into a tower block.
Richard Burton stars as an author of highly-controversial writings about the British government who gets bludgeoned to death by an unseen assailant in the film's opening scene (this is not a spoiler).
From there, the story of his life unfolds in flashback, some told by Burton's former psychiatrist (Lee Remick), and some gleamed by the French detective assigned to investigate the homicide.
The story-line of the high executives, who were interested in Morlar's case, almost pushed the movie to be a supernatural / political thriller, a la Brian De Palma's The Fury released in the same year.
His very best scene, however, is when he gave his wife and her lover a verbal pasting as they left his home: sharp, witty and deadly dialog, delivered as only Burton could.A good supporting cast helps to make things look and sound a lot better, though, beginning with Lino Ventura, whom I last saw in Garde A Vu (1981), as Inspector Brunel; Harry Andrews as Assistant Commissioner; the much under-rated Lee Remick as Dr Zonfeld; Derek Jacobi as a publisher, Towney, and a few other well known character actors.I liked the way the story was presented, as flashback within flashback to fill in the back story and thus solve the immediate mystery of the attempted murder of Morlar (Richard Burton), the writer with the killer disposition.
He had earlier demonstrated his destructive telekinesis power by causing a disastrous 9/11, 23 years before the real 9/11 terrorist attack happened, like plane crash into a high rise office building in downtown London that ended up killing over 700 people.
Now with him, or his brain, still alive and kicking Morlar is ready to cause far greater damage and destruction that's unless the life support system keeping him and his brain alive is shut off immediately!Very disturbing film with no happy ending with a both witty and sarcastic Richard Burton outstanding as the green eyed monster and "Master of Disaster" John Morlan.
I was happy to get clarification on that point which did serve to provide some small sense of personal closure.I can't recommend the movie itself, however, as explained below.MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW (but really, there's very little reason for most people to watch this, unless you're fatalistically inclined...)The movie itself started out promisingly-- a grim thriller involving a police investigation of an assault on a cynical, bitter, anti-religious writer, played by Richard Burton.
Alas, not even this cast of respectable character-actors can bring conviction to such far-fetched nonsense.Novelist John Morlar (Richard Burton) claims to have a gift for disaster.
Brunel finds himself racing against time to prevent yet another Morlar-inspired catastrophe.With a cast of this quality, you'd expect The Medusa Touch to be all about the acting.