My review was written in July 1982 after a screening at Lyric theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.
Pete Walker's "The Comeback" is a minor gothic horror film that has had some theatrical and cable-tv exposure, reviewed here for the record. Film was lensed in 1977 under the title "The Day the Screaming Stopped".
Jack Jones toplines as Nick Cooper, an American singer back in England after a six-year layoff to make a comeback with a new pop album. His estranged wife Gail (Holly Palance) is killed in their London penthouse while Nick stays at a spooky old country mansion to prepare his songs. Amidst ambiguous supernatural happenings, Nick falls in love with his manager's secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson). Haunted by his wife's ghost, Nick ultimately has a confrontation with the killer in the mansion.
A good cast almost makes this programmer work. Jones is affecting as the neurotic lead, though his personality and type of music make the "pop idol" premise far-fetched. Stephenson, later to become a top comedienne. Is very attractive in a straight role as the vulnerable heroine. Vets Bill Owen and Sheila Keith make an impressively quirky old couple as the housekeepers.
Walker has built a cult reputation for his series of eight horror pics made during the 1970s, of which "The Comeback" is a lesser entry. His emphasizing gore and grue here do not hide the pic's indebtedness to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", including an overuse of that film's transvestite payoff gimmick.
His fondness for elderly horror stars (Owen and Keith this time, Anthony Sharp memorably in 1975 ("The Confessional") may account for Walker having been completely bypassed by the recent youth-oriented horror film boom, but he is bound to get attention with his next all-star (Price, Lee, Cushing, Carradine) fright exercise.
Pete Walker's "The Comeback" is a minor gothic horror film that has had some theatrical and cable-tv exposure, reviewed here for the record. Film was lensed in 1977 under the title "The Day the Screaming Stopped".
Jack Jones toplines as Nick Cooper, an American singer back in England after a six-year layoff to make a comeback with a new pop album. His estranged wife Gail (Holly Palance) is killed in their London penthouse while Nick stays at a spooky old country mansion to prepare his songs. Amidst ambiguous supernatural happenings, Nick falls in love with his manager's secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson). Haunted by his wife's ghost, Nick ultimately has a confrontation with the killer in the mansion.
A good cast almost makes this programmer work. Jones is affecting as the neurotic lead, though his personality and type of music make the "pop idol" premise far-fetched. Stephenson, later to become a top comedienne. Is very attractive in a straight role as the vulnerable heroine. Vets Bill Owen and Sheila Keith make an impressively quirky old couple as the housekeepers.
Walker has built a cult reputation for his series of eight horror pics made during the 1970s, of which "The Comeback" is a lesser entry. His emphasizing gore and grue here do not hide the pic's indebtedness to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", including an overuse of that film's transvestite payoff gimmick.
His fondness for elderly horror stars (Owen and Keith this time, Anthony Sharp memorably in 1975 ("The Confessional") may account for Walker having been completely bypassed by the recent youth-oriented horror film boom, but he is bound to get attention with his next all-star (Price, Lee, Cushing, Carradine) fright exercise.