Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Of the movies on my DVR that are getting another airing soon, a lot of them have been stuff showing on FXM largely because that channel has a smaller set of movies to show and repeats movies in the rotation quite a bit. But one that ran on TCM a few months back and is finally getting another airing is Seance on a Wet Afternoon. That airing is Tomorrow (Dec. 28) at 5:45 PM.

Myra (Kim Stanley) is a medium living somewhere near England together with her henpecked husband Billy (Richard Attenborough). The marriage has been going sour, largely because some time back they had a stillborn son, with that putting a lot of strain on Myra in particular. You get the feeling that she's beginning to have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, and beginning to believe in her power to be a medium. Myra comes up with a crazy idea that will prove to everyone just how good a medium she really is.

That idea is to find a rich couple with a child, and kidnap the child. The couple will then hold the child hostage, with Myra's intention being to use her powers as a medium to find the chid and deliver the child back to the parents safely, without really taking the ransom money. Why anybody would expect this to work is beyond me, but then a good portion of the movie is questioning whether Myra is really sane. Poor Billy is the one who gets the job of actually carrying out the kidnpping.

The initial abduction seems to go successfully, followed by Myra's scheme to try to go to the house of the wealthy parents, the Claytons (Nanette Newman and Mark Eden) to tell them she's had some sort of dream involving the missing child. Of course it's a scam, and it only serves to bring the police, led by Supt. Walsh (Patrick Magee) to Myra and Billy's house. Thankfully, Billy had the good sense to hide the little girl. But it only serves to put a greater strain on Myra's sanity.

Myra then gets the even nastier idea that her dead son wants the girl they've kidnapped to be with him, which means that Myra now wants the girl dead. And, of course, it's going to be Billy's job to do the actual killing and dispose of the body, which is just a step too far for him. Now, the movie was made in the UK, but it was clear that it was going to get released in the US as well, and at the time the movie was made in 1964, the Production Code was still in effect, so there had to be some way for the plot to play out such that Myra and Billy don't get away with what they did. But how is everything going to be resolved?

Seance on a Wet Afternoon is a movie that has a very interesting premise. But a movie that's not without its flaws. That's largely because the movie plays out at a very leisuerly pace, a lot of times feeling too slow for its own good. It also doesn't help that the two protagonists are fairly unlikeable people. But the movie has a lot of pluses as well, thanks in no small part to the portrayals of the two main characters by Stanley and Attenborough. The black-and-white photography also serves to give the movie a stark look, being one of those movies that wouldn't work so well in color.

So if you haven't seen Seance on a Wet Afternoon before, definitely give it a try.