Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

The Medusa Touch Blu-ray Movie Review

The Imagination of Disaster

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 24, 2013

The 1978 film, The Medusa Touch, is a cult classic for some, but for most it's completely forgotten, which places it squarely in the wheelhouse of specialty publisher Hen's Tooth Video. Even on paper, the film has elements that make it historically significant. It was the first movie produced by Arnon Milchan, who has since produced numerous important projects, including Fight Club, J.F.K. and Once Upon a Time in America. It was a feature film made in England at a time when the English film industry was in the doldrums; its director, Jack Gold, worked primarily in TV and on the stage, but succeeded in partnering with Oscar-winning editor Anne V. Coates (Lawrence of Arabia) to get Medusa funded and cast with a glittering roster of English acting talent. The film was the only adaptation of a novel by author Peter Van Greenaway, who trafficked in political paranoia, science fiction and, in the case of Medusa, telekinesis, all popular elements in contemporary cinema across the channel (Carrie was 1976; The Fury was 1978; Scanners, 1981; Firestarter, 1984). Medusa's depictions of disaster eerily anticipated such events as Chernobyl and 9/11.

Of course, the most obvious distinction of The Medusa Touch was the element used to advertise it at the time: the presence of Richard Burton, billed as the film's star, although his appearance is relatively brief. At one point on the commentary included with this release, it's referred to, half jokingly, as an extended cameo. Still, his character is the center of the film. One commentator compares him to Orson Welles in The Third Man. Even when he isn't on screen, everyone talks about him.

Burton was on the downward slide of his movie career at the time, his health undermined by years of drinking and hard living. He had to be persuaded to take the role of John Morlar in Medusa, because he was reluctant to do another film with supernatural elements after just completing Exorcist II: The Heretic. He filmed all his scenes and recorded his voiceover narrations in just a few weeks, but his presence is a big part of what elevates Medusa above the forgettable B-movie it might otherwise have been. Additional class is added by the elegant Lee Remick in the role of a Morlar's skeptical psychiatrist. She too initially refused the role in Medusa, having recently starred in another devilish franchise, The Omen , but it's fortunate that she changed her mind. Her scenes with Burton, and with the police investigator looking into John Morlar's past, are some of the film's best.

As he watches the TV coverage of an American moon mission gone horribly wrong, novelist John Morlar (Burton) is bludgeoned, apparently to death, by an assailant he recognizes. A neighbor, Pennington (Robert Lang), sees the door to Morlar's apartment left open, and the police are called. The lead investigators, Inspectors Brunel (Lino Ventura) and Duff (Michael Byrne), examine the body, inspect the apartment and interview Pennington.

Then something remarkable happens. Morlar begins to breathe again. He is rushed to the hospital and placed on life support under the supervision of Dr. Johnson (Gordon Jackson), with a constant police guard who is instructed by Brunel to write down anything that Morlar utters.

(Technical notes: Inspector Brunel is French. His presence is London is explained as the result of an exchange program between Scotland Yard and the Paris Police. In Peter Van Greenaway's novel, the character was an Englishman named Cherry, but the character's nationality was changed to satisfy French co-financiers. The actor, Lino Ventura, was Italian but had spent most of his career in the French film industry. He spoke his own dialogue in English, but was dubbed by another actor in post-production.)

Inspector Brunel's investigation leads him to Morlar's psychiatrist, Dr. Zonfeld (Remick), who is as surprised to meet a French cop in London as he is to meet an American female shrink. (In the book, the character was an Englishman.) Aided by flashbacks, Zonfeld tells Brunel that Morlar suffered from delusions that major losses in his life were his fault: the death of a severely religious nanny, his parents' death in an auto accident, a school fire that claimed the lives of several teachers and fellow students, the death of his adulterous wife (Marie-Christine Barrault), even the suicide of his neighbor Pennington's shrewish wife (Avril Elgar). Morlar's life was beset by tragedy, Zonfeld explains, and he tried to process it by taking it upon himself.

But the further Brunel digs into Morlar's life, the more he finds indications that there was more to Morlar than Zonfeld's psychological explanations. A barrister (Alan Badel) with whom Morlar once practiced law before a tragedy forced his early retirement, a fortune teller Morlar consulted in desperation (Michael Hordern), even his publisher, Townley (Derek Jacobi), all had experiences that are difficult to reconcile with the psychiatrist's benign account. And throughout the film, Brunel keeps passing the horrific site where a 747 jumbo jet plowed into an office building in central London, killing everyone aboard as well as hundreds in the building and on the ground. The event dominates the news, and the search for the cause continues.

When Brunel ultimately identifies the murderer (or, as it turns out, attempted murderer), it becomes clear that the killer was trying to save humanity from a power that Morlar was beginning to use deliberately in furtherance of an agenda. Indeed, the EEG attached to the injured man in the hospital is suddenly alive with activity, as various dignitaries, including the Queen herself, gather for a fund-raising event to help restore the cracked stone structures of Minster Cathedral (a fictitious structure that substitutes for Westminster Abbey). Brunel races to the scene, but he isn't in time to save many of the attendees. Just before the credits role, Morlar finds a way to communicate to the startled authorities that he has still larger targets in mind.

The Medusa Touch Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Medusa Touch was photographed by Arthur Ibbetson, who knew Burton from better times as the cameraman on Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). Ibbetson's best known work in a long and varied career is probably Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). In The Medusa Touch, his primary challenge was mixing live action shots with complex opticals and miniatures depicting disasters caused by John Morlar's strange powers.

Hen's Tooth Video's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has been taken from good quality source materials with only some minor weave in the beginning and end titles betraying any instability in the film elements. The image is remarkably clear and well defined for a film of this era, a tribute to Ibbetson's lighting, which was obviously designed to increase the sense of Morlar's strangeness by making everything else in the world visible and normal (with the exception of the opening sequence, where it is essential that the audience not be able to make out precisely what is happening). Colors are rich and saturated, which is often the opposite of what one sees in Seventies films. Black levels and contrast appear to be accurate, and these is no evidence of inappropriate digital tampering. The film has a natural-looking grain pattern that is visible but never distracting. Complaints about "softness" will inevitably be heard from eyes conditioned by the digital era, but they are misplaced.

Because it uses the format of a police procedural, The Medusa Touch has many scenes of basic conversation. For such material, the relatively low average bitrate of 20.00 Mbps is sufficient, but only just. No compression artifacts leapt out at me, but I would like to see the Medusa Blu-ray again on a much larger screen.

The Medusa Touch Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Medusa Touch's original mono mix has been reproduced in the front left and right channels and presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. It's a strong, solid mono mix with wide dynamic range and remarkably good bass extension for the era. The soundtrack's effects may not reach around into your surround speakers, but delicate small effects designed to be unsettling (they discuss a few of them on the commentary) can be clearly heard, along with crisply delivered dialogue and a suitably spooky score by Michael J. Lewis (Theatre of Blood).

The Medusa Touch Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Jack Gold, Kim Newman and Stephen Jones: Newman is a journalist, film critic and novelist. Jones is an editor of horror anthologies and author of several studies of horror and fantasy films. Both are devoted and knowledgeable fans of The Medusa Touch, and their questions and comments elicit many recollections from Gold about how the project was assembled, the logistics of shooting, the experience of working with Burton, Remick and the rest of the cast, and Gold's filmmaking aesthetic. Newman and Jones both delight in pointing out Medusa's connections to both prior and subsequent films and later events in world history, and they make a good case for its place in the canon of cult classics.
  
  Note: The commentary must be selected from the "Setup" menu.



• Behind the Scenes Footage: Destroying the Abbey (480i; 1.33:1; 18:14): Not a featurette or a documentary, but raw behind-the-scenes footage taken during the live-action shoot for a critical sequence in the film that would later be enhanced with optical effects. The last scene in the group includes large practical effects intended to show massive church columns collapsing.



• Original Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 2:51). "I have a gift for disaster", says Burton's Morlar.

The Medusa Touch Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Medusa Touch often teeters on the edge of the ridiculous, but it's always Burton who pulls it back. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers wanted him so badly. Even past his prime, his gifts were so formidable that he makes Morlar a convincingly haunted and ultimately demonic presence. Without Burton, The Medusa Touch simply wouldn't work (and I concede that, for many contemporary temperaments, it still may not). The Blu-ray, however, is well made, and I don't hesitate to recommend it.