 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies. But before we get started, what are we drinking? Wolf's Bane English Bitter. Today we are going to be featuring 1978 or 1979's. It's kind of conflicted as to when this movie actually came out. Dominique. This movie was directed by Michael Anderson and he did Orca the Killer Whale. Which we just covered. Yeah, exactly. Logan's Run too he did. No! Cliff Robertson stars in this and he was in Star 80. I'm gonna get a license plate that says Star 80. Fuck you. And he was in Escape from LA. Gene Simmons is in this. Not from Kiss. Be funny if he was. He's in this. He's Dominique. She's one of those old school actresses that goes way back. She was in Spartacus. She was Admiral Norisetti in The Next Generation. If there's a Star Trek reference, we're gonna mention it. That's right. Dominique starts off with Dominique and her husband David Ballard having dinner together and she's talking about the chauffeur and he's like, well, don't you remember? You fired the chauffeur last night. You got mad at him. No, I don't remember that. They're at this big dinner. David's talking about all the some troubles with the business. Dominique and her sister start talking about this brooch. Well, where's that brooch? That's a nice brooch. I can't find him. They stopped the whole damn dinner to go look for this stupid brooch. They find out that Dominique actually kind of stole it, but didn't remember taking it. She's sleeping one night and she hears a noise and he gets up and it's all dark and mysterious. She goes into the conservatory like glue. She sees this skeleton thing hanging. She goes and gets her husband and they go look and while there's nothing there, it's gone. So she feels like she's losing her mind. One night, David is sleeping and he hears this crash, glass breaking. He gets up and eerie and slow. He goes down the stairs. It's a big house. It takes a long time to get there. He goes to the conservatory. Dominique is hanging there. She had committed suicide, gets the corner over and the chauffeur, the chauffeur actually has to cut her down and the corner tells her, yeah, sorry, you know, she's dead. You're at the funeral. They see the casket go down in the ground. Everyone's there in black. David's back at his study. He's all smoking that cigar. He seems a little kind of too happy with himself over what just happened. He gets disturbed again at night by this kind of somber piano playing. He gets up and goes down and the piano is playing and no one's sitting there. He goes and looks at the keys and the keys are being depressed. The lid comes down on the keys. He's like, oh my God. Then he sees Dominique coming towards him and he goes and kind of hides in his study. So David ends up getting a phone call. Something very weird has happened. Something odd. You're going to have to come down and take a look. He goes all the way down to the cemetery and he sees that somebody has delivered a tombstone with his name on it. The date of death says soon. David ends up actually paying off the chauffeur. Again, the chauffeur is poor bastard. Pays him quite a lot of money to actually dig up the grave because he keeps seeing visions of her walking down that corridor by the conservatory. They end up digging the coffin up and it's just rocks inside. And he starts seeing her standing outside of his work and phoning him. He's getting letters delivered to his work that are signed her. Yeah. It's like, what the hell? He actually has her legally this time exhumed. And when they open the casket up, she's in there. So like, what the hell's going on, right? He kind of doesn't believe this, right? And so he confronts the corner and he's like, well, when we put her in the casket, are you sure she was dead? He's like, well, yeah, of course. It turns out that somebody's in the coroner's house though, and ends up killing the coroner. The point of view kill. It's very Avengers-like. He's got that poker. He's got that cane. You see them grab that weird scowlful type thing. So David goes back to the tombstone to look at what the date might be, right? And it turns out that it says October 25th on it. It just happens to be the 24th. He tries to go to sleep, but he hears footsteps again downstairs. He goes down that long winding staircase, and he sees Dominique coming at him again. And so he shoots at her, and of course nothing happens. Goes into that study again. Again, it goes into the study. And he has this calendar. He flips it over to the 25th. And that's where we're going to end the story. So if you want to see what happens to David and with Dominique, finish watching Dominique. Is it really a ghost? Is it foul play? You don't know. And that's one of the best things about this movie. The whole story and the plot of the movie, right? And the mystery and all the twists. Because there's a lot of tons of twists in this movie, and they happen early on. Like Dominique, the main character dies, like not even a quarter into the movie. You're like, oh, shit, she's dead. Or like, what's going to happen now? Then they dig her up and she's not in there. Early in the movie, too. And you're like, oh, well, I guess she's not really in there. It's foul play. That twist is behind us. And then they dig her up again and she's in there. It's like, so there's these twists, but the twists end up not being twists because they come back on itself. And you're always wondering. It's like, okay, well, with all these new clues, something's got to come of it. And then it turns out to be just all smoke and mirrors. And the twists keep coming all the way to the end. This movie is a great twist ending, which you never see coming. And it's like, oh, man, like, oh, they got me. They got me. The characters in this are great. And of course, there's not many, which is what helps it. It doesn't get too bogged down with too many characters to keep track of. It's very simple. It's Dominique, and then she dies, and then her husband, David, who is basically has to carry this movie by himself after that, because it's just him alone in the house. And the damn chauffeur. And the chauffeur. And those are kind of the main characters. You don't need much more than that. Cliff Robertson does a great job of just carrying this movie, you know, with not much dialogue. No, that's the interesting thing about this movie. There's almost nothing being said in the whole movie. It's just all reaction. You see something and he reacts to it. And that's it. It's brilliant how they pull it off. There's no dialogue moving the story for it. It's almost just all visuals and reactions. It is kind of realistic in terms of, if you see a ghost, what would you say? Yeah. You wouldn't say anything. Maybe you wouldn't say anything, right? And it kind of, it's portrayed that way in this movie, right? He's, he just freezes. Yeah. And he goes to his study. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to have some big speech and all this fucking dialogue after you see a ghost. You're going to shit your pants. Yeah, exactly. Like, how can I relate to these rich upper-cross people that I already kind of don't like them? Because they're rich and hoity-todium. But then right away I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm not supposed to like them. As soon as Dominique dies. Yeah. Like, oh, I'm not supposed to like David. The big rich house starts to make sense because you don't like him because he's this big rich guy who may be a little corrupt and crooked. Exactly. And the fact the house is so big helps build the tension because when he hears the sounds it takes him a long time to get there. And you see him go there. It builds the tension. And then walking down those stairs along corridor to the big house really helps the atmosphere of it all. Camera work in this movie is fantastic. The way they frame the shots. A lot of the lighting for this movie is basically a hallmark of the movie, right? Gialo, Italian, Argento type vibe. Crazy lighting is always at night time. And then during the daytime shots in the house it looks all drab and boring like real life. Exactly, yeah. It's drab and kind of boring. But at night when the hauntings happen is when the lighting gets all unreal. The lighting is kind of saying things are starting to get unreal here. And they are. It's like, ah, fuck, what's going on? There's crazy lighting in this house. Why is it all red over there? I don't know. Yeah, but who cares? It kind of has its own piano theme which happens to just play throughout the movie, right? Where you think it's the ghost doing it maybe playing the piano. But it also helps to bring that somber feel to the movie as well, right? You really kind of feel this a weight on your chest from everything that's going on. This movie is a perfect example of less is more. The plot is so simple. There's no dialogue. There's very few characters. It keeps your attention. It keeps you intrigued right till the end. And at the end it's like, oh, fuck, they fooled me when it gets to the actual ending and the resolve and what actually is going on. I was like, oh man, there's twists within twists. It's a brilliant movie. Yeah. It actually is brilliant in its simplicity. So for fans of like Twilight Zone, it's like a long Twilight Zone episode. Kind of, yeah. And Night Gallery, it reminds me a lot of that pilot episode, Night Gallery, The Cemetery. Yeah. It's a lot like that. It is really a perfect example of telling a story visually, letting the visuals do all the work and dial back the dialogue. No bullshit. Check out Dominique. And until next time, keep drinking.