1965 psychological thriller
Rating: 13/20
Plot: General Zod, a butterfly-collecting outsider, wins a sizable chunk of change and decides to buy a large house out in the country, the main reason is that it's got a nice little cellar thing in which he can lock kidnapped women. He kidnaps a pretty art student and tries desperately to make her fall in love with him.
Read an interesting bit of trivia--this movie's ending was apparently not the kind of ending that was allowed by censors in 1965, but the reviewer, a newlywed, actually fell asleep and didn't finish watching the movie. The ending is pretty good, too, and a more Hollywood ending (of which I can think of at least three), would have made it a far inferior movie. The acting, I thought, was a little spotty, and the music was oppressive, but the story went at a Hitchcockian pace and managed to keep me interested with, for the most part, only two actors and a single setting. That single setting (also reminding me of Hitchcock in more ways than one), however, was a real find--lots of beams and bricks and curves and creaks that would have made it nearly impossible to not make pretty while filming. I didn't always believe what was going on, and I really would have liked to see a nude scene even though a nude scene would have created a contradiction with the title character's mindset. The development of that character's mental flaws was very good and almost real.
Here I am watching The Collector and wondering if I'll ever be able to fulfill my fantasy of kidnapping a pretty art student:
i read this book years ago...it's told from the guy's point of you and you become sympathetic until the girl's diary is inserted in the middle and he becomes kinda like a monster. i like that he tries to make her read catcher in the rye, a book that was only a year old or so when this was written.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie, he buys a copy of Catcher because she likes it and he wants to be able to talk about it with her like she would with her friends. He ends up really hating the book though.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the book. As you know, I don't read books.
hmm that's probably the same in the book too, i guess i switched it in my head, because i identified with him more than her gasp! did they mess with p.o.v.s?
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