Night Hair Child
– Oliver! star Mark Lester undertook a change of pace - and then some - with this uncomfortable, Bad S..
Oliver! star Mark Lester undertook a change of pace - and then some - with this uncomfortable, Bad Seed-like shocker. He plays Marcus, the preteen son of a recently-remarried, well-to-do writer, whose first wife (Marcus's mother) died a mysterious death. Marcus simultaneously resents his stepmother and feels erotically drawn to her; in desperation, he quickly and aggressively drives her to the point of a psychotic breakdown. He then quietly confesses his act of matricide to the stepmom and implores her to off her husband and abscond with the insurance monies.
14 Oct 1972
English, Italian
Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them.
James Kelley, Andrea Bianchi
Trevor Preston (original screenplay), Andrea Bianchi, Erich Kröhnke (story), Bautista Lacasa Nebot
Mark Lester, Britt Ekland, Hardy Krüger, Lilli Palmer
In this stylish and atmospheric psychological thriller reminiscent of Henry James's Turn of the Screw, a widowed English writer brings a young, glamorous new bride to his bleak, isolated home in rural Spain. She soon becomes obsessed with her 12-year old stepson, who she learns has just been expelled from school for mysterious offenses; while the boy enjoys, exploits, and feeds her increasing paranoia about him. That he is a brilliant and lonely child is obvious. But is he the victim of a neurotic woman's overwrought imagination-- in Shakespeare's words, the innocent flower, or the serpent under it?