Symptoms (1974)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

You won't be disappointed!

Pretty Good

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

the plot is paper thin but what it lacks in story it makes up for in good acting, excellent cinema photography like visual poetry, and a creepy moody atmosphere. I watched it in black and white and it looked beautiful.. I may watch again in color just to compare. This is the kind of movie that needs to be remade.. fix some of the clunky dialog and establish a more cohesive story arc.. but then again the feeling of being lost as to what exactly was happening on screen is part of this movie's charm.

An odd woman takes her girlfriend to stay at her place in the country, but a former girlfriend has something to say about that ...Slow and creepy mystery. The atmosphere is set perfectly by photography and music, but especially through the overgrown lakeside estate from the early '70s, when locations were cheap. I'm not sure this is a horror - it does dabble in the ghostly, but really it's all about psychosis - although the gore is effective: films from this era relished their stabbing scenes, and the crunchy-cabbage sound effects in this one got me every time.The lead actress is excellent, and the performances all round are good, but the big drawback is in the character of the odd-job man: the performance is a little awkward, and the purpose of the character turns out mundane, missing the opportunity to make this a true horror, where things turn inside out and the past becomes cosmic truth. Ahem. In the end it's just a tale of bloody madness temporarily disturbing the surface of normality.Music sets the tone. Photography is mostly delicious, and the house and lake take on real character.Overall: Nicely disturbing, but falls short.

I must be honest straight away and start my user-comment by admitting that I expected a whole lot more of "Symptoms"… I've always been a great admirer of the Spanish director José Ramon Larraz and pretty much loved all movies of his that I have seen, varying from the publicly acclaimed 70s exploitation highlight "Vampyres" to the widely disdained 80s slasher "Edge of the Axe", as well as everything in between. I had particularly high expectations for "Symptoms" and all the signs were positive. The film got released in 1974, which was the peak year of Larraz' career but also the golden era of the typical "British countryside horror", it stars Donald Pleasance's curiously enchanting daughter Angela in a rare lead role and the two-line plot synopsis promises a dark tale full of mystery and eerie atmosphere. Nearly all reviews that I encountered were very praising, whether from trustful IMDb users (whose peculiar taste in movies I usually always share) or from prominent movie critics (who unhesitatingly compare this flick to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" and label it as one of the best British horror movies not directed by a Brit). So here I was preparing myself to add another title to my list of all-time favorite horror movies, but I rather quickly got confronted with the realization that "Symptoms" is a superficially attractive but substantially void horror package! Yes, Larraz' talent for gradually building up tension and slowly generating an atmosphere of eerie mystery is unmistakable, but it also rapidly becomes abundantly clear that this is another one of those frustrating movies in which the climax can't possibly meet the expectations of everything that gets builds up towards to… In case you occasionally watch thrillers and/or suspense movies, you must know what I mean. The vague mystery elements keep on piling up and up, the main characters never reveal the slightest detail about their intentions (apart that they are raving mad) and every type of horror or perversion is suggestive but fundamentally nothing happens at all. The climax in "Symptoms" is arguably even worse than disappointing, as it literally just takes less than a minute and the whole "twist" is quite evident from the beginning anyways. But, it has to be said, Larraz' craftsmanship is vastly impressive and he manages to make the thin plot somewhat absorbing. Pleasance stars as an introvert and inconspicuous woman, Helen, who invites her friend Anne (who's more the social and extrovert type) to come stay with her at the secluded family estate. Anne notices that her friend keeps a bunch of secrets, like who's the attractive women in those living room pictures and why isn't she allowed to talk to the odd gardener who lives in the tool shed? That's all there is to share, but again, the depiction of Pleasance's mental dissolution is masterful and the film contains a gazillion of visually mesmerizing shots.

First of all I love pretty explicit and audacious lesbian vampire flick "Vampyres"(1974),but more rare and obscure "Symptoms" is even better and certainly different in tone.It's a very subtle,calm and restrained horror film with plenty of mysterious atmosphere.Helen Ramsey arrives back from Switzerland to her old-fashioned family home,accompanied by a friend Ann West.It quickly becomes clear that Helen suffers from a nervous disposition.At night both Helen and Ann hear voices in the house and Helen seems convinced that there is something in the attic,a trap door to which is in the ceiling in a corner of her room."Symptoms" is a genuinely frightening horror film about a woman slowly slipping completely into madness.The cinematography is striking,the interior sets are terrifyingly dark and the acting by Angela Pleasence is fantastic.I fell in love with this film and can't praise it enough.