Persecution Reviews

The 28-year-old son of veteran moviemaker Freddie Francis, Kevin, thought he really had something when he produced this Grand Guignol picture. Turner was following in the footsteps of Crawford and Davis in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and he hoped that her appeal would bring the people rushing in. Turner is the most possessive mother of all time, a wealthy American now living in England. She has been crippled by the husband who has since gone off somewhere. Her son, Weavers, represents the father in her mind, so she spends most of her time terrorizing the boy by frightening him through the use of several cats, all named Sheba. Weavers can take it no longer so he gets revenge by drowning her latest feline in a saucer of milk. Turner gets even by supervising a funeral for the pussy and giving the tiny coffin to Weavers as his Christmas gift. Time goes by and Weavers grows up to become Bates, a young man married to Farmer. Turner didn't want to lose her son to another woman and attempted to make their marriage fall apart to no avail. Bates and Farmer have a child who is suffocated when Turner's current Sheba jumps into the crib. Both Bates and Farmer are understandably depressed, and Turner, who wants to split the couple, hires Georges-Picot, a professional hooker, to act as a "nurse" for Farmer while the girl is still mentally reeling from the death of her baby. As Turner had hoped, Bates falls for Georges-Picot and soon becomes sexually involved with her. Farmer catches them in the midst of their lovemaking and runs out of the room, then falls down a flight of stairs and dies. Bates, having lost a wife and child, goes over the edge, kills Georges-Picot, then rushes to the garden to unearth the bones of all the dead cats. While digging, he finds the bones of his father, who he thought had deserted them years before. When he confronts Turner, she admits that she killed the man, who wasn't Bates' father at all. Rather, the real father was Howard, the same man who crippled her. Bates' mind totally snaps, and he winds up drowning Turner in her latest cat's milk. Howard stops by as the missing lover-father, but his contribution is negligible. The best part of the movie is seeing the gorgeous home in which it was shot. The house was owned by producer Harry Saltzman (the man who produced many of the "James Bond" pictures), but he had nothing to do with this mish-mash. Shockingly, Turner received the Best Actress award at the Festival of Horror Films in Spain for her role. Another movie that asks the question "Why in the world did they bother to make this?"