Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Cardinal Biggles This is SOOOOO 1960s. Stark monochrome, visually crafted; intelligent, suspenseful dialogue, a modestly paced intense build up of the characters and plot, clever musical accents; the psychological twists, the interaction of the characters - the dark sociopath, the compliant and ineffective hen-pecked husband accomplice. Marvellous. This is a modest budget film, yet very intense, very sinister with all sorts of taboos explored in the medium (pardon the pun) of a séance. No CGI, no mega explosions every five minutes, no car chases or corny catch phrases, and definitely no expensive sets. Just a house in Wimbledon, a seedy lounge set and a penurious David Attenborough reduced to running a motorbike and sidecar for their mastermind crime..... complete with old duffer motorbike helmet and gauntlets Great performances. These characters are the stuff that serial killers are made of, and they scared the sh*t out of me!

lasttimeisaw When Ms. Myra Savage (Stanley) self-professes that she is a professional medium, it does make me chuckle is there any definitive method to determine the word "professional" in this line of business in this cynical world? But Myra's believes her gift, but paradoxically in order to establish her reputation, she hatches a scheme of kidnapping a rich kid Amanda (Donner), and so she can her "gift" to correctly predict the whereabout of the kid and the ransom, to stage a sensation for her benefit.But it is a risky plan, as the parents of Amanda doesn't know Myra, she must pro-actively visit them and lure their attention, which will inconveniently raise the suspicion from the police (which is a sure thing after the kidnap has occurred), so a further police investigation is inevitable. Also it is an implausible plan, one may wonder even if she pulls off the subterfuge, how she can sustain her reputation after that? Keep rigging everything in advance? I fail to foresee what this one-time deal can really boost her career? As it is under one condition, she is a sham. But is she?Also kidnapping requires field work, so she must manipulate her weak-minded husband Billy (Attenborough) to carry out more physically-taxing procedures, including kidnapping, receiving ransom and transferring the hostage. This vintage black-and-white drama from Bryan Forbes hinges heavily on the play-off between Stanley and Attenborough, both are superb and tellingly affecting, although we can never morally take their stand, the scenes of their interactions register a sublime psychological mind-game of control and defence between a married couple. Stanley is righteously honoured with an Oscar nomination, Myra is shown simultaneously as a perpetrator with cold-hearted conviction and a victim of her own delusional obsession of their stillborn baby. Her so-called gift is the only connection (whether imaginary or uncannily tangible) to him which she clings to devotedly. A tour-de- force from Ms. Stanley, whose screen roles are rather scarce and here, it is a performance of a lifetime, she is resolute, calm, crafty and projects her towering presence with pitch- perfect note, until the ending, that ending which powerfully strengths the emotional impact by giving Stanley a show-stopping vent of truth and also masterfully veils the fact whether it is a guilt-driven confession or in a more eerie interpretation, she really reconnects with her dead child and gains her gift but at the same time, beans also been spilled so that she can never get away with her crime, simply brilliant! Attenborough, with a fake nose (which seems to be an odd option), didn't get enough credits for his equally excellent performance, he is the one audience is rooting for, his has doubt in their scheme from the very first, and he is compliant but we know when things reach the threshold, he is the game-changer can alter the entire plan, because he is not a psychopath, Attenborough instills great credibility into Billy, equips him with a humane touch which subtly subverts Myra's indefatigable madness. In cliques mainly composed with male chauvinists, we can see how easily his poignant acting can be easily snubbed. The truth is, occasionally the film's one-dimensional and predictable storyline tends to be a shade bland, and the procedural account of getting the random is too archaic to believe (a deliberate mockery of the police force?); but the performances are gravitating enough to ensnare viewers into a compelling human tragedy with its expressive chiaroscuro, a must- see for everyone.

James Hitchcock The title of this film is a bit baffling. Two séances play an important part in the plot, but neither takes place on a wet afternoon. One takes place in the evening, the other on an obviously fine day. Perhaps its significance is clearer in the original novel, which I have never read.Billy and Myra Savage, a middle-aged, middle-class suburban couple, kidnap Amanda, the young daughter of a wealthy businessman. Although they send her father a ransom note, their motive is not financial. Even though Billy is unable to work because of ill health, they live in a large, imposing Victorian house and are clearly not short of money. Rather Myra, a medium who holds séances in her home, believes that she can become famous for her supposed psychic abilities by helping the police to solve the crime.When I first saw this film many years ago I disliked it for what I saw as a lack of realism. How on earth did Billy and Myra imagine that they were going to get away with a plan so obviously badly conceived and badly executed? Looking back, I can see that my criticism was unfair and that I had been unduly influenced by films in which a gang of master- criminals put together an intricate, seemingly foolproof, scheme only to come unstuck because of some minor detail, of the tenacity or brilliance of the investigating detective, or of sheer bad luck. Because the truth is that Billy and Myra are not brilliant master- criminals. Far from it. She is mentally unstable and detached from reality to the extent that she hardly realises that she is committing a crime. She insists that she is merely "borrowing" Amanda, not kidnapping her. She believes that she is in touch with the spirit of her son Arthur, who died at birth, but fails to realise that she does not actually have any psychic abilities. If she did, she would not have to go through such a ridiculous charade in order to "demonstrate" them. As for her husband, he is merely a weak and cowardly little man unable to stand up to his domineering wife, although at the end he does display a greater humanity than she is capable of.This is the only film in which I have ever seen Kim Stanley. She was, apparently, a theatre and television actress who had only appeared in one previous feature film, "The Goddess", and was only the third choice for the role of Myra, Deborah Kerr and Simone Signoret having turned it down. Yet she is excellent here, showing us the way in which her self- deluded character's personality disintegrates bit by bit to the point where she can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality and can see no objection to killing Amanda. Richard Attenborough, the film's co- producer and her co-star, paid tribute to her "complexity of dramatic impression". She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (losing to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins) but this did not persuade her to make a career in films. It was to be another eighteen years before she appeared in another film, "Frances". (She was Oscar nominated for that as well). Attenborough is also very good as the cowed Billy.This was the third film directed by Bryan Forbes, who had made such a brilliant start to his directing career with "Whistle Down the Wind", one of the great classics of the British cinema; his wife Nanette Newman appears as Amanda's mother. Like Forbes's two earlier films (his second was "The L-Shaped Room"), this one is in black-and-white, something still regularly used in Britain (unlike America) during the mid-sixties, probably because colour television had not yet come to Britain. I was reminded of some of the early works of Alfred Hitchcock, especially "Shadow of a Doubt", another psychological thriller about a young girl in danger and which takes place in a seemingly tranquil suburb. "Séance on a Wet Afternoon" doesn't have quite the same emotional impact as something like "Whistle Down the Wind", largely because the two leading characters are so unsympathetic. It is, however, a taut and engrossing psychological drama.

marlene_rantz I was not sure if I would like this movie, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I not only liked it, I loved it! The plot about a psychic seeking recognition by involving her husband in a kidnapping plot might seem trivial, but there was nothing trivial about the great acting by Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. They worked well together! What I really liked about Richard Attenborough's performance was that he did not say much(except for one scene), but he held my attention just the same with his marvelous facial expressions. In my opinion, an actor who does not say much, but still can gain your attention is an excellent actor, and that is Richard Attenborough! This movie might not appeal to everyone, but it will definitely appeal to anyone liking great acting, so I recommend it for that reason!