The Haunted Airman
Tags: insanity

Plot synopsis:
During the Second World War, young pilot RAF Flight Lieutenant Toby Jugg (Robert Pattinson) suffers a serious spinal wound during a bombing raid on the city of Dresden. This injury consigns him to a wheelchair, facing a life as a paralysed recluse. In the hope that he can recover, his aunt-in-law, Julia (Rachael Stirling), takes him to Llancebach, a remote military hospital in Wales run by Dr. Hal Burns (Julian Sands), known for his unorthodox treatment methods.
Toby's stay as a convalescent, surrounded by shell-shocked military veterans, leads him to new terrors, especially after other patients suddenly die. Dr. Burns implores him to confront his demons, but during the night, Toby starts suffering from horrific nightmares, reliving the terrible carnage he had created. Reoccurring hallucinations and visions begin to cloud his mind. His only outlet is his cigarettes and the doting attention of Sister Sally Grant (Melissa Lloyd), a nursing sister.
Julia, with whom Toby was having an affair, seems to be the only person he trusts. When an intern at the nursing home goes to the nearby town, he brings a letter from Julia to Toby, who now knows that Dr. Burns is hiding his correspondence with his aunt. At his request, Julia moves into the hospital in order to treat her ward, but Dr. Burns begins an intemperate affair with her.
One night, the doctor gives a drugged Toby a razor and tells him "to do the right thing". When he rejects any further help from Dr. Burns, Toby subsequently begins to suffer from psychological disorders. Doubting everyone and everything, Toby conjures up a sinister plot involving Julia and Dr. Burns, but in his madness, kills the one person who loves him.

Review: If you watch it as a stand-alone movie it quite well portrays the story it is supposed to tell.
I knew already when I saw the length, that it couldn't be close to the book, so I decided to NOT compare and therefore liked the movie, regardless.One thing is for certain - Robert Pattinson shows an excellent range!
In the World War II, the airman Toby Jugg (Robert Pattinson) is hit in the spine during an airborne attack and he becomes paraplegic.
One night, Dr. Burns gives a razor to Toby and tells him to do the right thing, trying to induce him to commit suicide.
But late night Toby discovers the secret of Julia and Hal."The Haunted Airman" is a tale of paranoia, with a confused story, melancholic but beautiful cinematography with blue filter and great performance of Robert Pattinson.
I was expecting a horror movie and not a drama, but anyway the director and screenplay writer Chris Durlacher completely fails since he never develops the character of Julian Sands.
It's like someone in Britain said, "Hey, this guy is somewhat good looking so we need to make a movie with him in it that's based on a great book.
While we're at it, let's throw the scrabble letters against the wall every time we want some dialogue in this 'movie' and that will be what the actors say." If this was the case...mission accomplished.I honestly can't even begin to describe how horrible this movie is.
A disabled and traumatised WW2 airman is sent to a convalescent home in Wales, where his mental health gradually degenerates as a result of disturbing hallucinations, and growing suspicions that the doctor in charge may not be as benevolent as he at first seems.Though billed as being based on The Dennis Wheatley story 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg', the relationship is a highly tenuous one.
Unlike the book, this is a psychological drama with no hint of the supernatural, and while the technical quality of the filming is very good, it is very, very slow-paced and, at the end, downright confusing.
I can only guess that the film's makers were trying to emulate the ambiguous nature of 'The Turn of the Screw', but this is not in the same class at all.If you liked the book, I can't recommend it.
Sorry, but a slightly moving shadow on the floor in the middle of the night means nothing, especially when the curtains are open; it's probably just a branch moving outside the window.Robert Pattinson is attractive as ever and turns in a pretty good performance, but there was no way he could salvage this piece of crap.My response in a nutshell: yeah, it was only an hour lostbut I can think of so many better and more interesting things I could have done in that hour.
As a fan of the late prolific Dennis Wheatley who found "The Haunting of Toby Jugg" to be one of his most gripping thrillers, I was confused to find that this tedious mess was supposed to be inspired by that work.
Playing Jugg, Robert Pattinson mostly gives the perfect Goth fashion model note of cool emotionlessness, which presumably serves him well in the hunky teen vampire stories to which he owes his fame.
This movie, I have to admit, I was only watching because I am a Twilight fan.I wanted to see Robert Pattinson in something other than Harry Potter before viewing him in Twilight.
Watching this made me a very big Robert fan as he blew my mind as to his acting capabilities.
This young actor is severely underestimated.He has shown an enormous bout of talent and hopefully Twilight can help expose him a little further into the realm of big time acting.I cant wait to see any future films he is in as they are sure to be a success for not only him but for people that go and see the films.
I'd only ever seen him in Harry Potter and the atrocious attempt at a movie adaption of my most beloved book Twilight, and apart from a beautiful face I thought he showed talent.I think he does very much so in this film too.
As I found most of the storyline quite confusing, his acting was the only thing that kept me watching; I understand that the story in general is about a RAF pilot who gets injured during a bomb raid, and later is tormented by the memories of war, but then it gets a bit...
If you want to understand this film - don't watch it, read the book..
Problem is - if we don't know what's real, we can't understand the film, now can we?I have not seen the Twilight trilogy, so I'm enough unbiased to be able to say that Pattinson's acting in this film wasn't as superb as other reviews would have you believe.
The one thing good about the script was the poetic touch in the letters Toby wrote Julia.So...
i managed to sit through it once when i was ill but from about 10 minutes into the film i became distracted, you didn't feel in it like you do when reading the book.Robert Pattinson tries so hard to convince us of his madness, so hard he looks more funny than sinister.
i can now see why it was a freebie with another DVD i bought, don't waste your time watching it, read the book instead..
I don't know though, right now seems like his prime-time, starring in quite a few films.
There is not one ounce of subtlety anywhere to be found in the piece -- whether it's the protagonist's memories of bomber runs, or the blue-grey tone slathered all over the photography, or the hallucinations of the PTSD-afflicted Toby Jugg.I suppose this is in keeping with Dennis Wheatley's own work and philosophy, however, as Wheatley didn't consider himself any sort of stylist and his books are notably light on quality and long on gung-ho plot, with dialogue redolent with cliché and childishness at times..
I would not recommend this to anybody except a preteen girl who isn't really watching the movie anyway, just staring at the average looking actor who plays a crappy sparkly vampire elsewhere..
While Burns continues to offer him treatment, Jugg starts to believe that all is not as it seems.I'm all for a good ghost story because, although I do scare quite easily, the reason I tend to avoid horror movies is the gore they provide in place of genuine chills.
Screened as part of BBC4's season of ghost stories, I did hope for more from The haunted Airman  more than modern "scary" movies but also more than it actually managed to deliver.
At their best these do work but even then they are pretty clichéd and obvious; at their worst they smack of a total lack of imagination with easy tricks that don't have the desired effect.The acting doesn't help, although again I suspect the performances are hurt by Durlacher not having a grip on everything.
Stirling, Lloyd and others end up hanging around the scenes with the purposeful presence of extras.Overall then an average film at best.
Maybe the Director, his Screen Writer and such are aware of the tedious progress of this movie, but to us mere mortals...."what the heck is this plot all about, where is it going".
Yet another reminder that the Dennis Wheatley novels may well be a very good read (or they were, many years ago) but that they invariably make (or are made into) pretty crappy movies.
I don't even remember if I actually read "The Haunting Of Toby Jugg" myself or just have an awareness of it and think I did, so I can't compare in this case and just took the movie on its own merits.It was ostensibly very well made (props, camera-work, location, lighting &c.) and the acting is difficult to fault, in fairness, but disappointingly the storyline was not entirely free of some fairly well-worn clichés and dragged on without going anywhere much for so damn long I was ready for just about any ending just to get it over with.
Which is just as well - the ending was such a mess it was almost a case of 'Times's up, please hurry up and vacate the lot, we need it for someone else!' and it was neither particularly satisfying or shocking when it did finally arrive....The whole thing was pretty much a letdown like a sandwich with little or no filling - a pity really, it could have been so much better if it had tried a little less hard to be weird and suspenseful!.
If anyone deserves haunting, it's got to be the guy who has used the Dennis Wheatley name to conjure up an audience for this pathetic movie.
It belongs in a film museum, in the "Dismal Failure" section, or we could use it in school to teach how not to.It's pretentious and plodding and oh-so-politically correct, and would be bad enough in its own right, but to drag poor old Dennis down to the same depths of drawn-out inanity, with a plot that has virtually nothing to do with the book (!!), this is surely a case of tomb raiding.
If I've saved anyone a wasted evening with this warning, some good might yet come of my having watched it..
Toby Jugg (Robert Pattinson) is a WWII bomber pilot hit in the back during a bombing run.
The Haunted Airman (character Toby Jugg).
The young British airman, Lieutenant Toby Jugg, has been critically injured in his last raid over Nazi-held territory during World War II, and is transferred out of war-ravaged London to a remote psychiatric hospital for wounded soldiers.As played by a very young Robert Pattinson, his psychically wounded spirit is captured with amazing clarity.
Toby Jugg, an Airman, is sent to a convalescent home to recuperate from wounds suffered in the War. He slowly loses his mind in the home.I took this DVD out because of Robert Pattinson who was great in TWILIGHT (also a great movie) and he was a Vampire.
I watched the movie and kept waiting for the Vampire within him to emerge.
Actually, the whole story was kind of boring, draggy and the relationships with his Dr. Burns (Sands) and his aunt Julia (Stirling) were not well defined and all was left to our imagination.
Hmmmm, now we have to work at things.Besides this not being a Vampire movie, was there anything else that didn't seem right?
And, I felt I was misled into thinking this was a Vampire movie -- Probably because of the success of TWILIGHT, and his picture on the DVD box.
I have seen Julian Sands in "A Room with a View" and "Warlock" and along side Robert Pattinson in "The Dark Kingdom".
Not only is he tortured by nightmares, but his therapist (Julian Sand) has some pretty unorthodox techniques.This BBC pseudo-thriller is big on shadowy atmosphere but short on every other essential; there is no coherent plot, the music is terrible, and it all seems sadly pointless.
Made two years before "Twilight," Pattinson doesn't yet have the shaggy hair, bushy eyebrows, and blank gazes that would make him so popular as a vampire; here he's clean cut, youthful, and gives a fairly good performance, albeit one that relies heavily on long, slow drags on his cigarettes.
As his doctor, Julian Sand's character and motives are never explained; most of his performance must have ended up on the cutting room floor.
i only came across this on BBC Four one night when i was flicking through the channels on my TV and i was immediately hooked.the story revolves around flight Lt. Toby Jugg(Rob Pattinson)whose lost his ability to walk after an accident with his plane.Thanks to his aunt Toby ends stranded in a hospital where a creepy doctor steals his letters and tries to assume that there's something wrong in Toby's head.
From Robert Pattinson's portrayal of the physically injured and psychologically tortured airman, to Julian Sands as the less than beneficent doctor, who, from the moment you see him you just know is going to be evil.The story commences with Toby Jugg (Pattinson) flying his bomber when it's hit, leaving him a paraplegic, followed by his arrival at a convalescent home somewhere in the English countryside, looking far too gorgeous to be ill, and accompanied by his Aunt by marriage who the viewer realizes almost immediately he is in love with.Over time he comes to realize that his doctor is keeping him isolated, not sending his letters to his Aunt nor passing her correspondence to him.Then a couple of the other patients - who seemed to be improving - die and his paranoia really kicks in.If I have a complaint about the film it's that the Direction could have been a little tighter.
The acting is exemplary (as one expects from Pattinson and Sands - although Sands always seems to play the same character no matter who it is) however, and I have no complaints with the script.All in all, this is a very entertaining, if disturbing way to spend 70 minutes.....and did I mention how easy on the eye Robert Pattinson is?.
This movie has Robert Pattinson in it, you get to see his pretty face.
At no point in this movie do you truly know who were the bad guys.
When I first saw this movie I was shocked that I had never heard of Robert Pattinson before his "Twilight" success.
This movie was great from beginning to end.
Good film, Robert Pattinson was fantastic..
The acting was fantastic though, especially Robert Pattinson.
Overall the movie was watchable and I would watch it again for the sake of Robert Pattinson, maybe the story would be more clear the second time round as I have not read the book.
For just over a hour the film is really well done and acted, definitely recommend watching twice before you decide whether you like it or not.I wouldn't say the film was terrible I've seen much much much WORSE!.
As a Twilight and Pattinson fan, I was extremely eager to see The Haunted Airman.
After it was over I wondered what the hell I just saw.The film version of the book, The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley, is very choppy and confusing.
Robert Pattinson plays Jugg and he is the best thing in this movie.
It is a brilliant performance and Pattinson shines.The second reason, if there are others, to see this short film is Rachel Sterling.
She plays the beautiful aunt-in-law of Toby's who starts a relationship with Dr. Burns and pulls away from him.
Sterling is gorgeous and you can see the chemistry between them; it is as though they really WERE the characters and the strain of the relationship is evidentespecially at the end.Other stand out performers include Julian Sands as Dr. Hal Burns.
you want to watch an interesting movie?.
I JUST watched this dreck an hour ago and I have NO IDEA.Save yourself the agony: it's not the actors faults (probably), the script should have been tossed on the 'interesting but only for a short story' pile, the director should have called in sick (it might have been better!
Being a big Robert Pattinson fan (I admit it is due to the whole Twilight madness, he did not catch my eye in Harry Potter at all, wonder why?
I probably am mostly in love with Edward in fact), I was curious to see this film...so I saw it had a lot of bad reviews, but as a fan you have also some responsibilities, so...I have to say, the only really bad things about this movie are the script and Julian Sands.
I have not read the book, so no idea what the movie wanted to describe, but to me (spoiler alert) this movie just shows how Toby is slowly but surely getting mad, due to a guilty conscience from his awful war experiences, added to his fury and despair that he is now impotent(being paralysed from hip down or so).
The script is just awful, and I mean awful, leaves too many holes, scenes at the beginning are just like stop and go, action/cut..perhaps they want to show how Toby feels, the chaos and craziness??
Julian Sands on the other hand is not convincing at all and seems not to know exactly if he should play the bad doctor or the good doctor...or is that intended too?
So yeah, all a bit confusing, I guess for this movie it all depends on what you want to see and understand from it, you need a bit of patience and to have an open mind.
Outside of Robert Pattinson's performance, which I found to be stellar, especially given this was a leading role involving a very difficult topic early on in his acting career, for me, The Haunted Airman is rather a difficult movie to rate.
Did it begin because of the letters Toby wrote to Julia?), for example, I think it all would have made more sense to more people.
When rating it, I almost added one star for where it seemed Durlacher was trying to take this movie, but sadly, it was an almost good idea that fell just a bit short.
It runs 70 minutes, and by the end of the first 20 you will be aware that you are watching a piece of garbage.
That is the end of the movie.
It was mostly a bore but somehow I kept watching it.Rob smokes so much in this movie,it's to the point of hilarity.His performance was subtle but believable despite many dull droning speeches which I dare any actor to make exciting.
I would say watch a few choice scenes if you're into creepy stuff or like Pattinson but don't torture yourself & watch the whole thing.