• Wide Release
• Director: Gordon Hessler
• Written by: Christopher Wicking
• Running Time: 90 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: George Hamilton, Luciana Paluzzi, Cameron Mitchell, Thodoros Roubanis, Nora Valsami, Takis Kavouras, Joanne Zealand, Paris Dimoleon, Alana Stewart, Nikos Tsachiridis, Gunilla Blum

A couple of empty champagne glasses lay between a pair of corpses, a man and a woman – their hands folded peacefully together in the prose of two lovers who’ve opted to end it all with suicide. This is the shocking scene that greets a group of Greek police officials who have just boarded a floating yacht in the opening minutes of “Medusa”, a 1973 curio from television director turned big screen auteur, Gordon Hessler. The couple is actually a brother and sister pair, Jeffrey and Sarah, introduced in a post-mortem narration by George Hamilton (he’s Jeffrey), and it is their excessive, sometimes violent lifestyle, that unfolds over the course of the film. Sarah (Luciana Paluzzi) is a stylish, soft-spoken sort who has only recently become engaged to a wealthy and much-respected businessman Nikos. On the other side of the coin, her brother Jeffrey is a freewheeling, hard-gambling playboy, living each and every second of his destructive lifestyle to the fullest. Some people are afraid of their personal demons but Jeffrey revels in them. Interestingly, it is because of this that Jeffrey has found himself heavily in debt to a local mobster, Angelo (Cameron Mitchell), but he doesn’t worry about it much since both Sarah and he are assuming heirs to a large fortune. Sadly, things begin to come undone for the pair when their father draws up a secondary will just before his death. In the revised one, Pop has elected to cut his progeny out of it completely. It is their quest to acquire the modified will and alter it that sets into motion the events of the story.

Jeffrey turns to his gangster friend, Angelo, for help to wrangle in those who might have direct access to the will. Even though Jeffrey’s in debt to Angelo for over 130,000 dollars, they share this weird kind of big brother/little brother passive-aggressive relationship and the mobster agrees to help. Sadly, Angelo’s idea of interrogation involves filling a man’s lungs with water until he drowns. With that lead now dead and with time running out, Jeffrey is forced to take matters into his own hands by seeking out others who may have the will in their possession. A late-night visit to one of the supposed handlers ends with Jeffrey offering an impromptu rundown on the history of Greece as the man is violently strangled and left swinging by a noose in his hotel room. Another person, a beautiful stewardess who accidentally brushed up against the will handlers while on the plane, meets an even grislier fate as she is hacked to pieces and left in a bathroom. In both instances, Jeffrey was there, but, strangely, he never actually took part in the murders. Even more confusing is his nauseating reaction to the spate of deaths. Earlier in the film, he mutters to Angelo, “I don’t do murders” and, for sure, from the looks of things, he doesn’t, but if not him then who? For sure, the identity of the killer is obvious to anyone with an acute ability to pay attention.

The decision to keep the killer masked and hidden in the shadows for the majority of the film feels more like a nod to its Giallo heritage rather than any kind of attempt to build suspense. Soon a detective is tenaciously pursuing the brother and sister pair whose relationship seems to be a little more intimate than most. It’s hinted at for much of the film that is until the director, assuming that folks have yet to figure it out, elects to beat them over the head with it later on; “Sarah had sex with her brother! Sarah had sex with her brother! Sarah had sex with her brother!” screeches a drunken Hamilton while running down a moonlit beach. After a few more murders, one of which is brought upon by Jeffrey’s distinct misogynistic tendencies, the pair eventually find themselves desperate, on the run, and seeking solace aboard their yacht. Since we’ve already arrived at the conclusion before the film even began, it’s just a matter of check-marking how the pair arrived there.

Hinting at the idea of reincarnation, Hamilton’s post-obit narration suggests that he and his sister have lived many lives and that this is just part of some sort of bizarre spiritual progression or cycle. Interestingly, Jeffrey, who likens himself to a Greek deity and a former resident of Atlantis, seems to look at his life, regardless of how vile it was, as a simple learning experience, something to momentarily dwell upon before moving into his next life. Sarah remains without a voice as she, apparently, is narrating another movie. Director Hessler chooses not to linger too heavily upon the supernatural front, electing to make it part of the film’s (and characters) eccentric background.

From the outset, when Hamilton arrives at his sister’s engagement party dressed like Elvis, we get a sense that this film is going to be awash in over the top acting and situations and, for sure, it delivers. Using Greece and its cultural quirks as a backdrop, George Hamilton (2002's "Reflections of Evil"), Cameron Mitchell (1988's "Memorial Valley Massacre") and even Luciana Paluzzi (1974's "The Klansman") just seem to go for broke, hamming it up and just having a great time. For some reason this seems to be a major sticking point for some internet critics, but please show me the rulebook that tells me that I’m supposed to recoil in horror like Lugosi as Dracula staring down a cross every time someone overacts. Personally, I love it when the film is designed to allow the actors to go as crazy as possible in their performances. Yes, an over the top performance in an otherwise straight-edged movie can stick out like a sore thumb, but when everybody is jiving that way and the atmosphere of the film is experimental enough to allow for it, as a viewer, I’m in heaven. I personally loved Hamilton’s impersonations and the way he seemed to be bouncing off the walls in every scene, offering up the most unpredictable and bizarre character I’ve seen since, well, Crispin Glover last acted in anything. Note, his scenes opposite Mitchell take on a completely different tone than any of his others. In their scenes, ripe with homo-erotic undertones, the dominant-passive roles are clearly established and Hamilton remains mostly silent, a childlike straight man to “daddy” Mitchell’s funny guy performance. Regarding Cameron Mitchell, this is surely one of the most outrageous, most menacing, most energy-filled performances of his career. Like Hamilton, Mitchell's character work is wildly unpredictable. Even though he’s playing a cold-blooded murderer, the kind that cracks jokes while killing a man, he manages to convey a sort of likeable but menacing charm, much the same way James Cagney did back in film's like "White Heat". Regardless if he’s chomping on food, doused in suds or pushing a taxi driver and his cab over a cliff with a tractor, Mitchell just enfuses every scene he’s in with manic humor and intensity.

Regarding the title, which has some people confused, including myself at first, there are aspersions to mythology but it seems obfuscated behind all the other stuff this film throws at you. Some of the things I noted upon slightly closer inspection (translation: I had a few beers); In Christian symbolism, Medusa is represented in a guised passage in the Book of Arthur. In it 'she does not exercise her powers by turning people to stone, but by causing the waters to swallow them up’ and indeed, when the killer (here, a female)appears, really for the first time, casting Angelo, who in this film epitomizes the evil man figure, to the sea, it is just one more piece in a post-modern mishmash comprised of many facets of the Medusa and other Greek mythology. Incest, betrayal, reincarnation and even some "divine speak", make up the intestines of what is “Medusa”. Even the film’s final shot involves the subtle merging of a poisoning and death with the notion of immortality – all of which arose when Jeffrey and Sarah drank from the champagne bottle. Is this a nod to the blood of the chthonic female character of myth, said to bring about death and immortality (here, a spiritual form of it) from those who came in contact with it? What exactly did Jeffrey and Sarah drink? Who knows?

Clearly this film isn't for everyone but if you love to see actors getting crazy and going over the top and generally having a great time, you should check it out. This film was recently released by Mill Creek Entertainment in its less than perfect original quality but alas, for fans interested, at least you can check it out on DVD. Christ, you just have to know it's going to be better than whatever Scarlet Johanson junk filling up the megaplex this week.

Click this link to see more images from "Medusa"