Dominique (1980)

Pretty Good

Best movie ever!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

If they had cut out (or at least shortened) all the scenes of Cliff Robertson walking (usually up or down some stairs) from "Dominique", it could have been an effective 30-minute episode of a TV mystery series - and that's probably what it should have been in the first place. I like the plot of this movie: it keeps you guessing all the way and it ties up all the loose ends before it's over. But Michael Anderson's direction is, with a few exceptions (Robertson seeing the tombstone with his name on it, the murder of the doctor), stiff and pedestrian. The characters are lacking in personality and humor, though it's always a pleasure to see Jenny Agutter, for my tastes perhaps the most beautiful actress in 1970s cinema. ** out of 4.

'Dominique' is a rather Creaky British Gothic melodrama from 1978 with a quality cast that, frankly, outshines the rather lackluster material; all that said, I remain a total geek for atmospheric, haunted house spookshows, and 'Dominique' still proved to be a marginally entertaining affair; even though the plot is wholly derivative, and the twists might be a little more linear than the writer might have initially hoped! The fault is in the hackneyed, uninspired writing, as the direction really is first rate, and the moody lighting is quite exceptional, reminding one of Argento's bar-raising 'Suspiria'. For those more unforgiving Brit Horror fans seeking some admittedly tame, late night horror hokum, you most certainly could do far worse than 'Dominique'.

**SPOILERS** Cliff Robertson looks like he just walked on the set without knowing what the movie's all about and without a script to cue him in this vary slow and and dark,the movie makers must have saved a mint on the low electricity bill, Ghost/Suspense/Thriller "Dominique is Dead". Stock-broker David Ballard, Cliff Robertson, is on the verge of going bankrupt in his stock picking and investing business and needs loads of ready cash fast to avoid it. With David's wife Dominique, Jean Simmons, in control of the family fortune he has to work fast to either drive her insane or to suicide in order to inherit her estate and rigs up all kinds of gimmicks to do it. After a while Dominique is totally unsure if she's losing her mind or if what she's been seeing and hearing in the dead of night are real. Before you know it David finds her hanging in the greenhouse dead, an obvious suicide. Things now seem to look up for the scheming and maniacal David with Dominique's dead and him to be the one to get his hands on her money, and keep his stock business from going under, but instead the exact opposite begins to happen. Strange sounds in the night with the piano playing Dominique's favorite musical piece all by itself and even Dominique herself appearing out of nowhere and haunting David driving him out of his mind like he did to her. David really gets shaken up when he's called by the cemetery manager where Dominique is buried to find his own headstone next to her's stating that he'll be joining her very soon. At his office David sees this women in black outside in the street watching him, the same woman that was supposed to have paid for his headstone, all hours of the day. The man completely freaks out when later there's an inscription carved on his headstone born. June 14, 1931 and died. October 25, 1977 which is just a few days hence! Going to the cemetery and digging up Dominique's coffin with his faithful limo-driver Tony Calvert, Simon Ward, both David and Tony are shocked to find the coffin empty! Is Dominique dead or is she really alive? Later having Dominique officially exhumed it's found to the shock of David and Tony that her body is really there! what did Dominique do? go back in her grave after David and Tony dug it up? David gets so crazy that he starts to accuse his housemaid old Mrs. Davis, Flora Robson, of being behind all these ghostly incidents that's appearing to him which makes her leave the mansion in both fear and disgust. With Dominique popping up every night and spooking him has David empty a fully loaded handgun on her only to find, later with Tony,that the bullets not only went through her but ended up embedded in the walls and door of the house! Now totally insane David is driven to the edge of a balcony of his house and falls to his death in the greenhouse; the very place where Dominique's body was found on the early morning of October 25, 1977! the date of his death inscribed on his tombstone. With Dominique's last Will & Testament read by her lawyer at the end of the movie we get an idea to who was behind this scam to drive David to his death like he did to Dominique. We have to sit through another ten minutes or so for the culprits to reveal themselves and at the same time fall out by double-crossing each other. Overlong and at times boring "Dominique is Dead" should have ended some ten minutes earlier leaving the audience up in the air to what really was behind all the strange and unexplained happening in the movie. By awkwardly trying to explain them, very unconvincingly, away the film muddled the plot even more and just self-destructed like the tape-recorder in the TV series "Mission Impossible".

A wealthy wife is convinced that his equally wealthy husband tries to drive her mad by scary voices and haunting portents at their country mansion. After her sudden death, she seems to return to haunt the husband.Predictable and fairly restricted all-star suspense shocker on the lines of "Les Diaboliques" with very occasional moments of "frisson".