The Other (Robert Mulligan, 1972) [RePoPo]

******************************************************************************* The Other (Robert Mulligan, 1972) ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- General Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Type.................: Movie Container file.......: AVI Video Format.........: XviD Total Bitrate........: 2038Kbps (Video: VBR 1854Kbps, audio: VBR 171Kbps) Audio format.........: MP3 Audio Languages......: English Subtitles Ripped.....: Spanish Resolution...........: 688x368 Aspect Ratio.........: 1.85:1 Original Format......: 1.85:1 Color................: Color FPS..................: 25.000 Source...............: Anamorphic PAL DVD Duration.............: 01:35:48 Genre................: Suspense IMDb Rating..........: 7.0 Movie Information....: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069050/ Filmaffinity.........: http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film320626.html Allmovie.............: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- General Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chilling and eerie, this supernatural tale of good versus evil coils around twin brothers living with their grandmother in a sleepy rural area during the summer of 1935. After his grandmother encourages Niles to develop what seem to be psychic gifts, Niles starts to suspect that his twin may be involved in recent fatal accidents. Surprising twist after twist heightens the sense that a horrifying climax lurks at the edge of the viewer’s vision--and the stark finale will have suspense and thriller lovers starting the film again to savor its intricate, disturbingly memorable moments. CREW: Robert Mulligan - Director / Producer Thomas Tryon - Screenwriter / Executive Producer / Book Author Robert Surtees - Cinematographer Jerry Goldsmith - Composer (Music Score) Folmar Blangsted - Editor O. Nicholas Brown - Editor Albert Brenner - Production Designer Tom Tryon - Executive Producer Ruby Levitt - Set Designer Joanne Haas - Costume Designer Tommy Welsh - Costume Designer Don Bassman - Sound/Sound Designer Jack Solomon - Sound/Sound Designer Joseph di Bella - Makeup Don Kranze - First Assistant Director CAST: Uta Hagen - Ada, Grandmother Diana Muldaur - Alexandra Chris Udvarnoky - Niles Perry Martin Udvarnoky - Holland Perry Norma Connolly - Aunt Vee Victor French - Angelini Ed Bakey - Chan-yu Jack Collins - Mr. P.C. Pretty Christopher Connelly Clarence Crow - Cousin Russell Lou Frizzell - Uncle George Loretta Leversee - Winnie Portia Nelson - Mrs. Rowe Francisco Rabal John Ritter - Rider Jenny Sullivan - Torrie ******************************************************************************* SOME REVIEWS (May contain spoilers) ******************************************************************************* Some horror films leave such a chilling impression that they become impossible to forget. The Other is one of these. Adapted by Thomas Tryon from his novel and directed by Robert Mulligan, The Other is a dark, eerie minor masterpiece that is filled with lasting images: a finger wrapped up in a handkerchief, a boy leaping into a pile of hay with a pitchfork in it, the corpse of a baby drowned in a wine barrel. The film focuses on twin brothers living on a New England farm in 1935. Peeling away in layers, the tale reveals a family fraught with tragic accidents that don't appear so accidental. Tryon's three-act script nicely builds up the suspense revealing the evil that resides within one of the boys. However, a disturbing twist at the close of the second act abruptly shifts the direction of the plot and sends the film into a frightening spiral in which all of the truths are finally exposed. As he did with Summer of '42, director Mulligan perfectly captures the time period as well as the essence of childhood. Young stars Chris Udvarnoky and Martin Udvarnoky do an excellent job playing these devious children, but it is Uta Hagen who steals the show as their all-knowing grandmother. Jerry Goldsmith's score is purposely low-key and in keeping with the picture's ominous, downbeat tone. The network television version added a voice-over to the film's final shot. (Patrick Legare, Allmovie) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a summer when bad luck just seems to come in waves. Maybe they should have taken warning last spring, when Father was killed by a trapdoor that fell on him in the barn. Now things are really getting bad. Mother has been paralyzed in a fall down the stairs, and Marshall landed on a pitchfork in the hay, and Aunt Vee must have had a heart attack or something and her body wasn't found for days. And the baby . . . Well, it's like they say. Things gotta get worse before they get any better. Niles, a chubby little boy with the face of an angel, plays around the farm and tries to stay out of trouble. Somehow, he's the only one who never gets paralyzed or skewered or anything. But he has his own cross to bear: His twin brother Holland departed this earth some months ago after a strange illness. Well, maybe Holland departed and maybe he didn't. Everyone else in the family is under the impression that Holland is dead and buried, but Niles sees him clear as day, and talks with him, and they play together out in the woods. Holland keeps getting Niles in trouble. And when Niles gets in trouble, everybody's in trouble. Just ask Father, or Mother, or Russell, or Aunt Vee. Or the baby . . . Robert Mulligan's "The Other" is a movie that is maybe about the supernatural and maybe not. It all depends on whether Niles is schizo, or whether Holland really has returned from the dead, possessed his twin brother's soul, and is stage-managing the troubles. My notion is that Niles is cuckoo. But Mulligan plays, a cagey game with his camera, always showing us Holland from Niles point of view, but never showing us Niles as Holland would see him (if Holland were there). Also, nobody else sees Holland. Mulligan, whose last film was "Summer of '42" and who gave us another nostalgic portrait of the past in "To Kill a Mockingbird," places his film in the rural 1930s. It is a time of drowsy summers and half-remembered baseball scores, and a time for a boy when everything is bigger than life, and scarier. Mulligan also has given the movie a weird Gothic feel and populated it with grotesques. Niles goes into town to the circus, for example, and sneaks into the freak show. All of the people inside look evil and menacing and seductively unhealthy. Niles decides to hold his own little magic show. At the real sideshow, the magician's assistant slipped out of the trunk by dropping through a trapdoor, just before the magician stuck the swords into the trunk. That can put ideas in the head of a young lad with imagination. There's that trapdoor in the barn, for example - the one that killed Father. And although there isn't any magician's assistant handy to disappear, there is always the baby . . . "The Other," which is based on the novel by former actor Tom Tryon (you saw him as "The Cardinal"), has been criticized in some quarters because Mulligan made it too beautiful, they say, and too nostalgic. Not at all. His colors are rich and deep and dark, chocolatey browns and bloody reds; they aren't beautiful but perverse and menacing. And the farm isn't seen with a warm nostalgia, but with a remembrance that it is haunted. The movie isn't scary in the usual horror-film way, but because Niles is such a creep - the kind of kid who would pull the wings off a fly and then claim the big boys made him (and get them in trouble, and go out looking for more flies). Kids like that will stop at nothing. (Roger Ebert / July 6, 1972) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember seeing The Other when it was first released in 1972 and being disturbed by the general concept and haunted by a couple of images (that I can't reveal, lest it give away too much). Similar to Freaks (even including a brief scene at a carnival freak show) the film has elements of horror, but overall it's hard to classify under strictly one genre—many parts are rather pastoral, others have elements of a thriller, yet the overall effect remains one of horror. Much of The Other revolves around a few plot twists and devices, so I'll avoid spoiling key information. After starring in minor parts in numerous Hollywood films (The Longest Day, The Cardinal and 18 others) Tom Tryon produced and wrote this disturbing tale, set in the New England countryside in 1935. The film opens in the woods on a pensive young boy named Niles, who has an identical twin brother named Holland. The twins may look alike, but their personalities are completely different—Niles is the shy, introspective nice child while Holland is the outgoing naughty one. It seems that the camera is doing elementary tricks on us at the beginning when it never shows the twins in one frame together. So it appears that they are using the same kid for both twins until the credits reveal that identical twins Christopher and Martin Udvarnoky were cast as Niles and Holland respectively. Using inexperienced child actors to carry the movie has drawbacks (this will be the boys' only film), but the two perform adequately enough. In fact, they act like . . . kids, who alternate between being innocent, playful, and crude. Even more professional child actors wouldn't be able to reveal much more character than the Udvamoky twins since the script is mostly interested in the boys as plot devises. Creating the overall ominous atmosphere is far more important than any potential character study. The most developed character is the grandmother many of us would love to have—Ada (Uta Hagen), who is especially close to Niles. She has taught him "The Game," akin to the way the mythological Merlin instructed King Arthur by teaching him how "get inside" other creatures to see their point of view, best illustrated with the scene where Niles sees the area from a crow's eye view. The soaring camerawork here is very effective. After this sequence, we understand what the boys mean by playing "The Game" in other circumstances. From pre-screening clues on the video box and by its usual classification in the horror section, some creepy things are anticipated and director Robert Mulligan doesn't disappoint—he builds suspense gradually (some will think far too slowly), and he'll throw out a number of red herrings. You may be able to guess "some" of the secret that the movie tag line "Please Don't Reveal the Secret of The Other" refers to, but you'll be hard pressed to guess all of it. Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score helps measurably—it's memorable, but not overused. Despite its age, the film still holds up fairly well but would flop as a new release in today's film climate. Certain scenes would be shot differently today to show a lot more blood and gore. I'd love to see what Argento could do with this psychological horror/thriller, given his track record with Phenomena and Deep Red. Instead, viewers will see glimpses of various accidents (or are they?) and will anticipate the coming gore scenes, only to have the camera switch elsewhere. While Hitchcock proved that such a technique can work magnificently, Mulligan is no match for the master. The Other is a competent flick that will prove to be a lot freakier for film fans with active imaginations. Unfortunately, the film came onto the scene a few years too early and was quickly buried by the superior Halloween and other teen slasher films that played off Halloween's success. The Other is now out of print and largely forgotten, perhaps still stored on some dusty rental shelves or sold on a few online auction sites. I don't anticipate this relatively low budget flick to be revived, unless someone can obtain the rights for a remake. But it's certainly worth a rental if you can get hold of a copy—it was good enough to pop back into memory when I was trying to think of an overlooked horror film, and there's certainly a lot bloodier flicks that have long ago been erased from memory. (John Nesbit, Old School Reviews) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE NOTICE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check you have installed the right codecs, as listed in this .nfo file, before trying to play it. VLC will play this file without having to install any codec. 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Snake.Plissken (2008-09-11)

I first saw this movie when I was a child and it's still fresh in my memories. It's one of those movies that you never forget, even 20 years after.
Really good quality and awesome movie.
Thank you for this release :)

MGinna (2008-10-01)

I was just a little girl, when I started to wach the movie...I couldn`t. It was to scary for me back then. But I could never forget a scene of a boy
leaping into a pile of hay with a pitchfork in it. I was looking allover for this movie, I didn`t even know the title...Thank you for sharing!

 rkimble (2008-12-23)

This is a good movie. Much overlooked, out of print (as far as I know), well made and spooky.

bexxs (2009-08-15)

Great old-fashioned horror film.

shasham (2010-06-07)

Wow, I'm really intrigued. Thanks so much for sharing this repopo! I'm dying to see it. :) Thanks also to seeders! Cheers!

PSotero (2012-07-17)

Nice! Thanks!