SHORT TAKES
THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED (Hallmark):: No, The Last House on the Left, Don’t Look In the Basement, The Horrible Old House on the Hill, and The House That Vanished aren’t all on the same block, but they do belong in the same neighborhood. All are thin excuses to bring you the maximum of suspense and slaughter with the least amount of plot.
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SHORT TAKES
THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED (Hallmark):: No, The Last House on the Left, Don’t Look In the Basement, The Horrible Old House on the Hill, and The House That Vanished aren’t all on the same block, but they do belong in the same neighborhood. All are thin excuses to bring you the maximum of suspense and slaughter with the least amount of plot. The major trouble with this movie is that the house never vanished. The location in question is the scene of a brutal knife murder which our heroine and her boyfriend witness by accident; they were breaking and entering at the time. Although The House That Vanished is a cut above the hack-a-minute movies that preceded its release, it is still a disappointing rewrite of a made for TV movie, complete with the typically leggy English blonde.
Jaan Uhelszki
RAFFERTY AND THE GOLD DUST TWINS (Warner Bros.) :: Instant nominee for the Worst Film of ’75 Award. Alan Arkin, Sally Kellerman, and Mackenzie Phillips, in roles that seem to have been written for Elliot Gould, Karen Black, and Linda Blair, meander through the southwest in a broken down car, stopping at Dairy Queens, bars, and fleabag hotels in order to soak up the requisite amounts of local color, pathos, and boredom needed for a Movie That Says Something About The Human Condition. A bad script (there’s even a tearjerker ending set in a Catholic orphanage) and witless direction leave Arkin and Kellerman with egg all over their faces. They deserve better. And so does the audience.
John Kane
