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A Reflection of Fear
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Directed by William A. Fraker.
Starring Sondra Locke.
In A Reflection of Fear a young woman, Marguerite (Sondra Locke), cloistered in a turn-of-the-century Victorian dream-world by her mother, vies for the attention of her visiting dad, Michael (Robert Shaw), both conventionally and sexually, in hopes that she'll get to live with him. Her plans are complicated by a series of murders that may or may not be by Marguerite or her eerie life-size doll Aaron. The perpetrator moves around the estate through secret passageways. The first victims are Marguerite 's mother and grandma. While the investigation is under way, a local boy tries to woo the girl, but whenever he gets too close, the girl lashes out in unpredictable ways. Meanwhile Michael's fiancée, Anne (Sally Kellerman), becomes suspicious of Marguerite and what she understandably sees as Marguerite's creepy competitions for her dad's love. Anne's initial efforts to befriend Michael's daughter turn into exasperation and disgust. As the situation spirals out of control, the long-absent father is forced to confront Marguerite 's twisted personality and upbringing. ~ All Movie Guide
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Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
lost interest.
A Reflection of Fear belongs to a group of pre-slasher horror movies from the late '60s/early '70s, when Psycho's influence was more psychological than visual. They revolve around perverted puberty, films where the killers/monsters had been screwed up during adolescence -- usually from a parental figure -- so that sex becomes a physical threat that they defend themselves from by annihilating the bodies of others. With a final twist that out-skeezes them all, Reflection is a profoundly unsettling masterpiece of the form. Sondra Locke embodies a young adult still acting like a little girl; her costumes, a mixture of stifling Victorian lace and short skirts, further captures the extreme dualities of her nature. Beneath the summery idyll backdrop, the film hums with unsettled menace, punctuated by well-orchestrated murder sequences. One of noted cinematographer William Fraker's few directorial efforts and shot by Laszlo Kovacs through the gauzy glow of a Hallmark filter, it anticipates Carrie as a depiction of a drawn-out girlhood stagnating and stifled into a Gothic nightmare. ~ Michael Buening, All Movie Guide
 



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