SCREAM, PRETTY PEGGY (1973)
TV-Movie
Article 4499 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-9-2014
Directed by Gordon Hessler
Featuring Ted Bessell, Sian Barbara Allen, Bette Davis
Country: USA
What it is: You’ll figure it out

A college girl takes on a housekeeping job with a famous sculptor who is caring for his invalid mother. She soon discovers that this family has some skeletons in the closet…

Bette Davis always adds a bit of authority to whatever she appears in. And I have to admit that Sian Barbara Allen has an odd but refreshing style that I find quite interesting. Gordon Hessler also does a good job at directing this one. Unfortunately, none of this really covers up the fact that the story itself is cobbled together from some very familiar elements of other well-known stories; in fact, if I were to come up with a thumbnail description of this one, it would be that it’s something of a cross between a “Jane Eyre” style gothic thriller and… a movie that is extremely well known. No, I’m not going to give away what that movie is, but I saw it coming long before the movie was over. The fact that the movie feels like a compendium of cliched situations certainly didn’t help things, either. It actually has a respectably high rating on IMDB, so it no doubt has its fans, but for me, it ended up being a very long wait for the second shoe to drop.