A TASTE OF EVIL (1971)
TV-Movie
Article 3888 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-28-2012
Posting Date: 4-6-2012
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey
Featuring Barbara Stanwyck, Barbara Perkins, Roddy McDowell
Country: USA
What it is: Mystery thriller

A young woman, recovering from a traumatic rape from when she was 13, returns to her home after years of recovery. However, she begins seeing strange sights and starts to believe that her attacker is still in the area…

Despite the plethora of famous names in the opening credits (Barbara Stanwyck, William Windom, Arthur O’Connell, Roddy McDowall), the name that most struck me was that of screenwriter Jimmy Sangster. And, about five minutes into the movie, I started getting an overwhelming sense of deja vu; there was something just way too familiar about the events I was seeing. Why did the movie SCREAM OF FEAR come to mind while I was watching this? Then I remembered that that movie had also been written by Jimmy Sangster… and that its original British title was TASTE OF FEAR. Coincidence? Not by a long shot. Oh, the details are different, but this movie is following the playbook of that one very closely. Which is probably why I found very few surprises here; it’s recycled material. Well, at least the acting and the direction are solid, since it redeems the movie enough that I can say that, if I wasn’t surprised, I wasn’t bored, either. Sometimes, professionalism is enough.