Take away the horror/mystery element of this mud 70's cult classic, and you'd have a fun trashy soap opera. Esteemed doctor Michael Sarrazin (as the title character) is having nightmares about a murder that took place decades before and wakes up believing that it's been in a different life. He begins to investigate what he's been dreaming about against the will of his girlfriend, Cornelia Sharpe, and ends up in the Springfield Massachusetts area where he meets young Jennifer O'Neill and her mother, Margo Kidder, and pieces begin to fit together, with Kidder bothered by the feelings she gets by his presence as more nightmares make Sarrazin begin to regress into the characteristics of the dead man whose identity he doesn't want to capture.
The combination of gothic horror and tragic romance makes for a fun film that is greatly aided by the beautiful location footage of several Massachusetts cities and towns, with the script that never let you guess what's going to happen. Sarrazin is quite subtle, with Tony Stephano as the ghost of the dead Jeff possessing him, and Kidder playing her character in two different time periods, and mesmerizing in both eras O'Neill comes off as a beautiful block which would have worked better had she been playing Kidder's part. This manages to be gripping and fortunately not campy. Due to be remade, you couldn't pay me to see the updated version. The subtlety of this one is all I need.
The combination of gothic horror and tragic romance makes for a fun film that is greatly aided by the beautiful location footage of several Massachusetts cities and towns, with the script that never let you guess what's going to happen. Sarrazin is quite subtle, with Tony Stephano as the ghost of the dead Jeff possessing him, and Kidder playing her character in two different time periods, and mesmerizing in both eras O'Neill comes off as a beautiful block which would have worked better had she been playing Kidder's part. This manages to be gripping and fortunately not campy. Due to be remade, you couldn't pay me to see the updated version. The subtlety of this one is all I need.