User reviews

Underrated horror-thriller with an interesting cast, led capably by a young Sondra Locke as a reclusive girl, who yearns for the affections of her absent father (Shaw), as she struggles mentally with inner demons and a strained relationship with her mother (Ure) who she blames for her father's estrangement. When Shaw visits with new girlfriend in tow (Kellerman), Locke sets out to impress him with her superior intellect and creativity, but love her as he does, he's unwilling to 'rescue' her from her unhappy existence with her mother. As he prepares to leave again, he's confronted with a series of unexplained events including fatal accidents, murder and twisted sanity.

It's the stuff of nightmares; the haunting score, lighting, and especially Locke's performance contribute to a chilling, suspenseful tale that is at times, graphically violent and gruesome. Shaw delivers another watchable performance as the increasingly concerned father, while Kellerman (aside from being breathtakingly attractive) is equally effective as an innocent bystander and unwilling witness to the unfolding madness.

A first rate cast, professional production values and intelligent dialogue all deliver, but somehow, this minor thriller seems to go perpetually unnoticed. The plot might not be rock solid, and there's undoubtedly some narrative weaknesses, but invest a little time and latitude, and you should be repaid handsomely. Great fright night fare.

A Reflection In Fear tells the story of a wealthy man (Robert Shaw), returning home for the first time in 15 years to see his daughter and to divorce his ex wife so he can marry his fiancé He's devastated to learn his daughter is treated like a prisoner on the estate, locked away from society by a vindictive wife (Mary Ure) and mother-in-law (Signe Hasso). Marguerite lives in a fantasy world, with imaginary friends named Aaron who seems to come real and gets very jealous of Marguerite.

I must say I watched this a while back and I was pleasantly surprised, it was a really interesting watch and I can see that this being from the early 70's has influenced many later slashers such as "Sleepaway Camp" and "Unhinged" I'd like to go into greater detail about this "debt" but doing so would ruin the surprise ending.

Sondra Locke who plays the daughter Marguerite gave a mesmerising performance She looks so fragile and vulnerable in her Alice in Wonderland dresses, she really steals the scenes from the other cast members. Robert Shaw's performance is restrained but it's because his character is supposed to be oblivious to his daughter's sexual advances. He's still the best male actor in the cast and his larger than life qualities shine through. Mary Ure, Shaw's real wife at the time, has little dialogue but is able to convey evil and hatred with just a glance. Sally Kellerman also gives a strong performance as Anne, a woman who realises her future is crumbling before her eyes.

All in all Reflection may be a forgotten gem, but I really liked it and has the presence of a strong cast and a strong story line, I would definitely recommend tracking this down.

Weird! This is one of the most bizarre horror flicks I've ever seen. But weird can be good, and in this case, it's definitely good! The beautiful and sexy Sondra Locke is at her very best as the tormented teen. Mary Ure and Signe Hasso are appropriately sinister as Locke's overprotective mother and grandmother. Robert Shaw is the disturbed young girl's estranged father who returns home to announce he's going to marry lovely Sally Kellerman. Naturally, several strange and dastardly deeds occur before this event can take place. The film is by all means an effective suspense story(all right, so it borrowed here and there from PSYCHO), but does have its shortcomings. The movie was very severely cut to avoid an R rating and slide by with a PG. Bad editing makes it all too obvious where the missing footage should be. But, it's still a worthwhile thriller with genuine scares and great acting.

The very least you can say about "A Reflection of Fear" is that it is a moody and atmospheric thriller! The story might feel familiar (especially when you watch a lot of obscure cult/horror movies) and somewhat predictable, but the tone of the film remains unsettling throughout thanks to the slow pacing and extremely integer acting performances. However, what this movie clearly suffers from the most are all the oppressed controversial and unethical themes that were supposed to be processed into the script but then abruptly cut in order to obtain a PG rating. Always a shame when that happens… Marguerite Sterling is an isolated and quite eccentric teenage girl that lives with her mother and grandmother in a remote land house. She has long and embittered conversations with a doll named Aaron and gets ecstatic when she finds out that her estranged father Michael is coming to visit. Officially he's coming to ask his ex- wife for a divorce, so that he can marry with his new fiancée Anne that he brought along, but when he notices how socially incapable his daughter Marguerite is, he wants to stay. And then a mysterious killer dressed in black visits the premises… Like I said already, it's a shame about the (not-so-) subtly camouflaged taboo themes. The most disturbing yet simultaneously powerful sequences in "A Reflection of Fear" are those in which young Marguerite tenderly embraces and kisses her daddy while his new fiancée jealously observes. The film is kind of reminiscent in atmosphere and events to a handful of great classics, including "Psycho" and "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", but director William A. Fraker nevertheless succeeds in giving it an own style and personality. Fraker primarily built his career as an eminent cinematographer and that he clearly demonstrates in several beautiful shots and camera compositions. With her rather odd facial structure and pale skin, Sondra Locke is ideally cast as the naturally uncanny Marguerite, but also Robert Shaw is exquisite as Michael. Shaw usually depicts robust and macho characters, like in "Jaws" for example, but here he impresses as the calm father figure. In fact, literally everyone in the cast – including supportive characters like the fiancée and even the investigating police detective – behaves like he/she is under the constant influence of Xanax or any other tranquilizing medicine! They all talk slowly and practically nothing seems to upset them, not even double murder. The integer performances give an extra dimension of creepy to already uncanny – but flawed – thriller.

Once I realized that Sondra Locke was going to be in this picture, I knew she would give an outstanding performance as Marguerite, "Ratboy",'86. Marguerite is a young girl who is very clever about many things and just simply stays in the house and talks to her dolls who seem to her as being real people who can talk to her and advise her what to do. Marguerites father is Robert Shaw,(Michael),"Jaws",'74 who has not seen his daughter in many years and was never around when she was born into this world. Michael meets Sally Kellerman,(Anna),"Ugly",'04 and wants to marry her, but he has to get permission from Marguerite's mother. Marguerite finally sees her father after so very long and becomes overly attached to her father and practically smothers him with her over powering love and affection. Sondra Locke put her heart and soul into this role and showed her great ability as a very dramatic actress. Very entertaining film.

A beautiful but strange teenage girl is kept isolated by her mother and grandmother. Her long absent father arrives with a new fiancé in tow, and asks for a divorce. It's not long before all sorts of slightly perverted and typically violent seventies shenanigans kick off!

One of the oddest early seventies psycho-thrillers... as Marguerite, Locke is all bug eyes, long hair and mini-dresses as the disturbed teenager, wafting around, talking to a seemingly imagined friend and enduring alarming mood swings. Hasso and Ure (in her last film) are given rather thankless roles as her sinister guardians (and given the apparently Canadian setting - references to Charlottetown, Georgetown - there's no particular explanation for Marguerite having a Swedish grandmother and an Anglo-American mother... and why is the gardener British?). Robert Shaw was a fine actor (and he was married to Ure at the time), but here seems to sleepwalk throughout the movie, despite the slightly incestuous nature of his character, and Kellerman was a curious and strange choice for the 'straight' role of Anne, especially if you consider her other more wacky roles of this period (M*A*S*H, SLITHER, LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS and BREWSTER McCLOUD).

In keeping with a movie-making trend of the period, much is made of Locke's pubescent sexuality (see also BABY LOVE, TWINKY, Sally Tomsett's character in STRAW DOGS), and even with the apparent editing, the murder of at least one character has a grainy, improvised and rather nasty look to it.

Ultimately it doesn't really work, but it's still a fascinating and spooky failure with a striking cast and captivating central performance, all of which leaves it lingering long after the final credits fade.

Despite getting top billing, for much of the time you're hardly aware that Robert Shaw is even in this murky psychodrama, the story so dominated by the female contingent (including Sondra Locke's imaginary friend who who looks and sounds like a grotesque parody of Hugo in 'Dead of Night').

The film is actually shown through the large hungry eyes of Sondra Locke who plays his daughter dressed as Shaw observes "like some precocious doll".

The casting of Shaw's wife Mary Ure as Shaw's estranged wife seeking a divorce is sadly ironic since her untimely death was one of the defining tragedies of his life.

Marguerite (Sondrta Locke), a disturbed teenage girl, becomes resentful towards her mother and grandmother when her absent father (the excellent Robert Shaw) returns after ten years, seeking a divorce. Based upon the story "Go to thy Deathbed" by Stanton Forbes, though I've never heard of it before. Marguerite is described by her mother as "a very special child", personally I'd call her odd. Very odd. Physically she looks very pale, her only friends are the collection of dolls in her room, one of whom, Aaron, she appears to be in a relationship with. And she has a habit of spying on people in their large coastal house. Overjoyed at being reunited with her father she takes it to the extreme with hints of incest, making some quite uncomfortable viewing. Locke was about 28 at the time, so playing a 16 year old was stretching it a bit but she gives an incredible performance. She is the best thing about this lesser known psycho thriller/horror, however I am pleased to say that the movie is both tense and very creepy. Never seen it before and I was impressed. Except for the ending. No spoilers but the identity of the killer is obvious and the final twist at the end is just too hard to swallow (and this shocking revelation has been used in other films too, such as Unhinged (1982)). Shame about the silly conclusion, still a good movie but could've been even better.

Sheltered young woman, home-schooled and possibly quite gifted, harbors a disturbed, overly-emotional side which comes to the surface after her absentee father pays her mother a visit, asking for a divorce. Directed by celebrated cinematographer William A. Fraker, this ill-titled psychological thriller falls into the trap that most films helmed by directors of photography find themselves in: each shot is composed for the utmost style, but at the sacrifice of fluid pacing and a tight, gripping narrative. Fraker (and his cinematographer, László Kovács) are very fond of gauzy whites and golden tones, giving the picture a burnished, tableaux feel. The mansion at the center of the action looks like a funeral parlor, and Fraker paces the wheezing yarn just like a funeral. Robert Shaw and Sally Kellerman (as Shaw's fiancée), two of the most interesting actors of the 1970s, manage to cut through the plastic overlay and are quite compelling despite the jagged editing (which turns their scenes into little bits of half-realized business). Sondra Locke, another interesting screen personality, seems cast for her resemblance to Catherine Deneuve in "Repulsion". Pale and saucer-eyed, with imposingly thick and long hair, Locke is a curious human puzzle, and she's initially quite intimidating and dangerous; however, this role is so old-hat that Locke can find nothing fresh to bring out of the deep freeze, and she flounders. Fraker allows Locke's freak-out scenes to go on and on, while Shaw (looking terrifically debonair) is put in the impossible position of playing touchy-feely daddy to her. All of this nonsense might be worth slogging through if the screenplay had been peppered with a modicum of tangibility (or, at the very least, some dry wit or humorous relief). As it is, Lewis John Carlino and Edward Hume's limp script, adapted from Stanton Forbes' novel "Go To Thy Deathbed", strands the viewer early on, and only the charisma of the players gets us to the finish line. *1/2 from ****

Fraker is a cinematographer, and not just your plain vanilla camera cranker, either. He's been responsible for the look of many of Steven Spielberg's early films, including "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind". He was also instrumental in seeing that some of our most beloved and distinctive TV series made it to the screen, notably the original "Outer Limits". This was his first outing as a director (he's only done a couple more before returning to the job he's known best for). It has a weird, psychotic look. When you enter this world, it's a strange one, where the surreal becomes reality. You watch this and, first of all, you'll think you've got it figured out right from the beginning. You won't. This is also Sondra Locke's first film, and she is frenetic, creepy, spooky. Fraker has created one of those classic 'old dark house' movies, but it's about way more than that. This is about power and manipulation and taking it to extremes; about the ultimate control freaks. It's very dreamlike throughout, and it builds to a feverish climax. You probably won't like the characters, but then, you're not supposed to. Sally Kellerman is very good in this. She had previously worked with Fraker in an amazing black and white episode of "The Outer Limits" called, I believe, "The Bellero Shield", opposite Martin Landau. Robert Shaw is elegant and clueless as the husband, and the wonderful Mary Ure is perfection as his melting, bizarre ex-wife. I saw this when it came out, in an empty theater, on a Saturday afternoon during the summer's heat. It's stuck with me a long time, because I dig unique thrillers. I had never seen anything like this before or since. It's in the same league as that old classic "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte", but it's edgier. Watch this as though you've never been to a movie in your life. Forget where you think it's taking you and let it lead you to the peculiar place it's really going. Seek this one out.

I am going to have to try and balance out all these reviews that give this film more than a few stars. Although the other reviewers probably do like this film for various reasons, I found myself bored with it in the first 10 minutes. This is one of those typical 1970's thrillers which spend an hour and a half dragging through a story that could be told in a 10 minute short film. I immediately put this film in the "One Time Watch" category.

I can't reveal too much of the film without giving away the plot, but much of the film involves an over bearing mother and her daughter (played by Sondra Locke) which, obviously, the crazy is leaking out. The director tried to intersperse mysterious happenings throughout the film which were blamed on local townsfolk, however, it was quite obvious who was responsible. (Once again I don't want to say too much for those that wish to watch this film.) The only "shocker," and I use that term loosely, was at the ending which I had pretty much guessed except for a minor detail.

You can find a crisp clean copy of the transfer with very few flaws for a film from the 70's. There is a haze over part of the film, but that is the director's vision and not the film quality itself. The editing was a little choppy and I believe that a few more details for some of the scenes would have helped the flow of the story.

Bottom line, for me this film was one of those films you would watch (back when we only had 12 channels) only because absolutely nothing else was on at the time. Don't get me wrong, I love the movies of the 70's, but this one made me tired.

Sondra Locke stars in this obscure gem as Marguerite, an odd, but very intellectual teenage girl who is kept isolated by her vindictive mother and grandmother. When her father comes to visit with his new fiancée, a perverted love triangle develops with Marguerite as the other woman.

Directed by famed cinematographer William A. Fraker, this is a solid psychological horror film with an ending that took me by surprise and adds a whole new layer to everything seen prior. The relationship between Marguerite and her dad, played by Robert Shaw, is quite uncomfortable, especially when he does nothing to discourage her attempts to court him right in front of his fiancée. Marguerite, clearly unhinged from being raised by her man-hating mother, also has hateful conversations with one of her dolls, believing it to be a real person. This, along with Marguerite's fears of being left in her hell, of her father abandoning her again, eventually leads to a murder mystery.

There's strong acting across the board, especially from Locke, who I just saw recently in a similarly off-kilter role in "The Shadow of Chikara". She definitely had a knack for playing creepy. As for the aforementioned ending, it's definitely a stunner. I can think of at least two later slashers that may have been inspired by it.

The film was apparently edited by the studio for no apparent reason, and this shows in the latter half, as scenes seem to end before they've really even begun. It can be a little confusing, and one hopes that the cut bits will be restored some day.

I was never a Sondra Locke fan. In fact, like many others, she will always be remembered as Clint Eastwood's long time fling. From what I gathered from a few movies I have seen her in (mainly Malpaso Productions) is that she was always this strange and odd actress that had a very off-putting demeanor and attitude. Pale, fragile and appearing like a waif in almost everything, in this mystery thriller, she is given the role she was born to play. She's a schizophrenic teenager who has been sheltered by her mother all her life. She hears voices and is always frantic about her imaginary relationships with her stuffed animals and dolls. We understand early on that this is an extremely disturbed individual. Her mother keeps a tight lid on her whereabouts, actions and her whole life which pretty much takes place on the household estate.

In comes her estranged father and fiancée played by Robert Shaw and Sally Kellerman. He tries to mend a relationship he never had while asking the mother for a divorce in the most frank, blunt and unemotional way I have ever seen in a movie.

I will not give away the climax for it's quite predictable, but in this case we want to see how it gets there. Save your time, because this is a slow paced mystery with lethargic acting, elliptic dialogue and a lead character who never seems to break out of that zombie like gaze while uttering poetic lines with that lilting voice. Sondra Locke is definitely unique, She can look beautiful, putrid, sickly, freakish and sometimes too nubile to be taken seriously. Robert Shaw gets caught between the jealousy of his fiancée and his daughter which limits his already stiff and anal performance.

Reflections of Fear takes too long to tell us what happens what we already knew all along.

Troubled teenager Marguerite, Sondra Locke, lives an isolated life with her mother, Mary Ure, her grandmother and her many dolls, talking to her alter ego doll named Aaron. Her father, Robert Shaw suddenly arrives with her new partner, Sally Kellerman, seeking a divorce and access to Marguerite. That night there are murders.

The trouble here is that the makers are so determined to make this atmospheric and full of clues and hidden meaning, that there isn't much room for the bones of a solid thriller, which this could easily have been. It's all very melodramatic with average performances all around, although Locke does shine as the paranoid Marguerite and Kellerman seems more grounded than the others. The clues to where this is all going are there to see and in fact the climax is not at all bad, but this does not compensate for a lot of nothing much happenings. Rather dull.

For a really minor film from the 70's, for some reason this one sticks with me - even this long after I saw it at a horror festival in the late 80's. Why? Maybe it's the idea that we all have secret urges and thoughts that could manifest themselves in the world, if we give them a vehicle.

Sondra Locke does a great job of being a too-mousy-for-reality girl who has a BIG secret, of which I'm not sure even SHE'S aware.

Cool ending, as well, with enough still remaining from the cuts for the viewer to get the idea.

Catch this one, if you can. You won't be sorry.

Haunting Gothic psychodrama (adapted by Lewis John Carlino whose THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA covers similarly torrid terrain) which, whilst undeniably owing a shade too much of a debt to PSYCHO (as previously noted by another IMDb commentator), whips up an unsettling and uneasy atmosphere of dread, not all of which is dissipated by apparently heavy censorship cuts made to secure a 'PG' for its original U.S. theatrical release in the early 70s. In fact, these often noticeable edits (scenes cut away before they've barely begun) lends the whole enterprise a greater sense of ambiguity by suggesting, rather than showing, the barely suppressed corruption and perversion. Possibly too low-key for popular tastes (which makes it all the more surprising that this was distributed by a major studio and roped in the likes of Robert Shaw) and, although I don't really go a bundle on films which seem to be bending over backwards to conceal their surprise ending (and, yes, I did see this one coming a mile off), this is still a one-off melodramatic curio worth seeking out and which certainly lingers in the mind. Now, how about a nice DVD transfer (my UK video copy is a nasty full-frame RCA Columbia release from the early 80s which doesn't do justice to what looks like impressive cinematography)?...

Unless I was watching an altered version of this movie I found the hazy ,blurred cinematography confusing and very irritating. I know there is a style of cinematography used across the decades that adds a certain atmosphere to a movie but this blurry imagery is just annoying.

Kellerman and Shaw made me want to watch this film and I persisted until the end but it would have been so much better if you could actually see what was going on. The editing was rather confusing as though chunks of the story had been cut to make it fit a timescale suitable for release.

Very disappointing movie and a mess. A waste of a good cast.

A Reflection of Fear isn't a good film and sadly it was the last one made by Mary Ure. The film earns more than one star because of the twist at the end of the movie.

"A Reflection of Fear" is a moody and stylish murder mystery about a strange and disturbed teenage girl named Marguerite(Sondra Locke)whose father Michael suddenly arrives.Michael wants to divorce her mother so he can marry his mistress.Locke has a special kind of friend,a creepy doll named Aaron.A series of brutal murders is set in motion.The first victims of a mysterious hooded stranger are Marguerite 's mother and grandma...Dreamy and bizarre horror movie with sluggish pace and solid acting.The performance of Sondra Locke is brilliant;she plays a haunted,beautiful,a ravishing 'innocent.'If you liked "Psycho","La Residencia","Sleepaway Camp" or "Repulsion" give this one a look.8 out of 10.