I Watch Films: Die, Die My Darling

 

Die, Die My Darling

Patricia travels to England to marry her fiancé. But before that she has a rather sad call to make. She goes to visit the mother of her previous fiancé, Stephen, who sadly died some time ago.

Mrs Trefoile the mother, lives in an isolated house in the countryside with several odd servants and hangers on. She’s a Christian fanatic, a reactionary fundamentalist. To her a promise can’t be broken so an engagement is as good as a marriage, and because husbands and wives will be together in heaven remarrying is bigamy. The hopes for salvation for her son Stephen rely on Patricia. When she learns that Patricia intends to marry again, and generally does not follow her beliefs, she locks her up in the house.

The rest of the film then revolves around Patricia’s attempts to escape and how the household reacts to this new and dangerous escalation. There’s an odd coda to the film. The 2008 play Looped, about Tallulah Bankhead, who plays Mrs Trefoile, and her attempts to record a line of dialogue in the studio during post-production; Bankhead struggling with alcoholism also clashes with the editor of the film. In an interesting twist, during a 2013 revival of the play, the deceased Bankhead was played by Stephanie Powers, who is Patricia in this 1965 film.

Watch This: Slow creepy psychological horror
Don’t Watch This: Very slow, Patricia keeps failing to understand