Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Diagonaldi Very well executed

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

MartinHafer When "The Medusa Touch" debuted, Roger Ebert apparently hated it so much that he named it the worst picture of the year. I am not 100% why he thought this...it's not really good but it's not that bad either.The film begins with Morlar (Richard Burton) getting bludgeoned. Despite the ferocity of the attack and the number of blows he took to the head, the police are shocked to see that they aren't investigating a murder but an attempted murder...though how he survived is anyone's guess. The trail takes them to the man's psychotherapist (Lee Remick) and she recounts a strange story about Morlar thinking he had the ability to use his mind to cause the deaths of folks he didn't like. And, since he was a detestable misanthrope, he didn't seem to like much of anyone! The man investigating the case (Lino Ventura) eventually comes to the determination that perhaps the man in the coma is actually a super- being...someone who does possess strange supernatural powers.This is a decent enough film but the premise itself seems better than the actual movie. I think, for me, the ending wasn't particularly thrilling. Plus, although I love Lino Ventura (he was amazing in many of Jean-Pierre Melville's films), here he seems odd...a French- Italian British police inspector. Worth seeing...perhaps.

JCarl01 This 1978 movie absolutely blindsided me. I'd read its name mentioned in articles for years, but until 2015, hadn't seen it because it was out-of-print. Knowing nothing about its plot, aside from the title, I finally watched it. I don't know what I was expecting, but certainly not the quirkiest, most exciting, big-budget horror film since 1985's Lifeforce. If you're a fan of that film, then you'll probably be a fan of this one. Not because the plots are similar but because both have scripts that start off on one track and then---Wham!---careen into the unanticipated. Richard Burton stars as an author of highly-controversial writings about the British government who gets bludgeoned to death by an unseen assailant in the film's opening scene (this is not a spoiler). From there, the story of his life unfolds in flashback, some told by Burton's former psychiatrist (Lee Remick), and some gleamed by the French detective assigned to investigate the homicide. Nothing is what it seems. Burton had telekinesis.This is not a film for anyone who wants fast-paced action. The slow build-up of The Omen has more in common with this film than, say, the hyper-kinetic set pieces of The Fury. What begins as a simple murder mystery evolves, by its conclusion, into a worldwide, epic-sized psychic battle to usurp The Establishment. Burton's character was not too keen about The Establishment. To reveal much more takes away the fun.Would I recommend this film to anyone under 30? Probably not, its slow pace would likely frustrate most Generation X-ers and Millennials. They are not the target audience for this movie. But for those who were sipping bourbon when The Legacy, Halloween and The Shining were still playing in theatres, drink deeply and enjoy. This movie begs to be rediscovered and re-evaluated.

Nerd_in_Norway With an extraordinary stage presence and a baritone voice so pleasant he could read the phone book and get a standing ovation, RICHARD BURTON would make even the dullest movies interesting (the exception that proves the rule being the dreadful 1977 Exorcist-sequel, THE HERETIC).Legendary for his two turbulent marriages to Liz Taylor, this Welsh Wonder of the World ranks up there with the giants of British film and theatre, but sadly so did his health. The man, who in 1974 nearly drank himself to death, suffered from both kidney disease and an enlarged liver at his early death ten years later.The toast of Hollywood in the early 1950's (Humphrey Bogart was one of his biggest fans), the 1960's saw him as one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world, he received a total of six Academy Award nominations. A Socialist and an Atheist with a strong contempt for Capitalists "exploiting the poor," he even suggested all actors were "latent homosexuals."Like so many of his stage and screen roles, Richard Burton could be larger than life. So what better part for this man, than the starring role in THE MEDUSA TOUCH, playing a writer living in horror convinced that he can murder people just by thinking about it!Most critics strongly dismissed this film upon its release in 1978. In retrospect I guess it's easy to see why a movie like this would seem silly, almost archaic at the time, especially as it was following gritty classics like Deliverance, The French Connection, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and beautiful spectacles like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.Seen with 21st Century goggles however it's near impossible not to enjoy what is going on here. THE MEDUSA TOUCH starts out with a brutal murder, takes on the shape of a police procedural, then flirts more and more with the supernatural, before moving into possible Sci-Fi territory and finally punching you in the face with scenes of both Action and Horror!"Horror" in this case meaning closer to Hammer House than it does the cynical US horror movies of the era (just so I don't get any angry messages from people who were expecting ROSEMARY'S BABY or THE SHINING).THE MEDUSA TOUCH has plenty of quirks and odd twists along the way, even a suicide-scene sprinkled with comedy, but this just adds to the fun, the end result being a movie quite unlike anything else. The movie's finale I found so memorable, I wanted to hug the screen, but that probably says more about me than anything else! Other people might want to punch the screen, and I would pity them for taking their movies so seriously.Italian veteran actor Lino Ventura is a fun choice co-starring as the French (!) police detective who has to figure out what is real and what's not. The beautiful Lee Remick is also along for the ride as Burton's doctor. The rest of the cast is made up of familiar faces, almost like a who's who of British film and television; Gordon Jackson, Harry Andrews, Michael Hordern, Derek Jacobi, Michael Byrne and the greatest classic "Sherlock Holmes" in the history of television; Jeremy Brett.The highlight of the cast is still Burton though. There is always something about this man's presence that lends extra credence to anything he's in.Compared to similar films, THE MEDUSA TOUCH seems somewhat forgotten today. Why this is, I'm not sure. Could it be so simple that it followed on the heels of the aforementioned EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC? A genre movie so boring, it works like a black hole on any nearby piece of celluloid.THE MEDUSA TOUCH is anything but boring. It might be eccentric and throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, but just like Richard Burton, it is never boring!

sol1218 ***SPOILERS***It's when author and former barrister John Morlar,Richard Burton,is found dead in his apartment with his brains bashed in it's suspected that he was the victim of a home invasion even though nothing was taken from the place. Later before his body even got cold to the astonishment of the police coroner and transplanted French Inspetor Brounel, Lino Ventura, who's on loan to London's Scotland Yard Morlar suddenly comes to life! At the local hospital it's discovered that Morlar's brain is working at a double or triple time pace yet his heart beat in barley audible. What's the reason for Morlar's sudden resurrection is that he's got some unfinished business to take care of that will end up wiping out all of London including the royal family top British Government officials and the Church of England which the cynical and atheist Morlar hates with a passion!Inspector Brunel goes to Morlar's psychiatrist whom he found extensively written about in his rambling journals Doctor Zonfeld, Lee Remick, to get the lowdown from her just what this unstable and crazy guy was all about! As well as who may have murdered or tried to murder him! And what he get's from the doctor is a story of death and destruction that goes back to when he was a pre teenager that Morlar feels that he with his supernatural and demonic powers was responsible for! At first believing that Morlar's claims of his power to will death and destruction on the world as well as individuals that he hates to be the ravings of a deranged lunatic Inspector Brunel can't put out of his mind, like Dr. Zonfeld couldn't, why is he still alive and why his brainwaves are somehow effecting events in the world around him.We get to see Morlar in action in a number of chilling flashbacks where he willed, with his snake-like eyes, death on anyone whom he felt messed with him or just gave him a hard time. It's later in his life when his ungrateful old lady and two timing wife Pat, Marle-Christine Barraut, told Morlar that she was leaving him for her lover bit actor Jeremy Brett, Edward Parris, which he was more then happy to see her go. But when Pat brought up what complete dud he was in bed and how Morlar fathered their stillborn child that he then really let his powers of death and destructions kick in. It's within an hour after Pat left him for good that Morlar got the "good news" from a police spokesman that she and her lover Edward were killed in a car accident! As happy as Morler was in hearing about the sudden demise of his ungrateful wife and her playboy lover he also now came to realize that his powers were real and with him slowly going insane he won't be able to control them anymore in the future! Thus leading to the deaths in disasters that he wills, with his uncontrollable brainwaves, countless thousands of human beings!***SPOILERS*** It soon becomes apparent that it was non other then Dr.Zonfeld herself who smashed Morlar skull in and for good reason. He had earlier demonstrated his destructive telekinesis power by causing a disastrous 9/11, 23 years before the real 9/11 terrorist attack happened, like plane crash into a high rise office building in downtown London that ended up killing over 700 people. Now with him, or his brain, still alive and kicking Morlar is ready to cause far greater damage and destruction that's unless the life support system keeping him and his brain alive is shut off immediately!Very disturbing film with no happy ending with a both witty and sarcastic Richard Burton outstanding as the green eyed monster and "Master of Disaster" John Morlan. A man whom the world and society ignored in not treating him for his sever mental and emotional problems and is now damned, in what's to become a major nuclear power plant melt-down, to suffer for it.