Now, I have to warn you, darlings, do not expect too much. I had heard of this movie for years, and with a title like "Tormented," I thought it would be better than it is. It is hardly a brilliant study in madness, like Polanski's "Repulsion." Nor is it bad enough to single it out as a camp icon.
Richard Carlson plays a mediocre jazz pianist named Tom Stewart. He thinks he is heading for a big career, but he is kidding himself, as he is a big old closet case. Wait till you see him running around with just a shirt and panties on, wiggling has trim ass, and then hanging out with Joe Turkel, as Nick, the blackmailer. Uhm-hmmmmmmmm…………..!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The trouble starts because Stewart is a better opportunist, than jazz pianist. When he lands Meg Hubbard, whose family is wealthy, he decides to ditch his current fiancé, Vi Mason, played by Juli Reding. They were most likely brought together in the music world, because Vi is a second rate night club singer. Which is just one step above a cheap cocktail waitress.
So, up to a point, I get Tom's reasoning; except, Meg Hubbard, played by Lugene Sanders, really does love Tom. While he sees only dollar signs.
Dumped Vi pursues Tom to the island (known as "Haunted Island," because of the mysterious death of a little boy years before. Now, THERE is a story I would like to know. Alas, we never get it.)
Anyway, Vi confronts Tom, and they argue all the way to the top of the lighthouse, where, through no fault of anyone, a railing breaks off. The trouble comes when Tom, with Vi falling, is still in a position to save her, but consciously chooses not to. She falls to her death, and the torment begins.
Actually, it comes in three forms. The first is next day, when Tom finds Vi's body washed up, and it crumbles to sea weed, and vanishes.
The best parts are when the ghostly form and the disembodied head appear, chanting, "Tom Stewart killed me!' over and over. Note, during these moments, the music is eerily familiar; it is the ghost music from Allied Artists' big horror success of 1959, "House On Haunted Hill." Like I said, Tom Stewart gets plenty of head here, but Vi does not begin to match the wit of Virginia Leith, as Jan In The Pan, from "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."
Then there is the blind busybody neighbor, Mrs. Ellis, played by Lillian Adams, whose attempts to replicate blindness fool no one. Brick, her Seeing Eye Dog, steals the show.
And so does Bert I. Gordon's ten-year-old daughter, cast here as Meg's kid sister, Sandy Hubbard. It is Sandy who livens things up. Her scenes with Tom suggest a frightening sexual precocity, and in one scene she seems to be coming on to him. As well as viewing her sister as a rival. What the hell is going on, here?
Sandy is also an observant busy body. It is she who witnesses Tom killing Nick, the blackmailer.
Now, Tom feels compelled to kill Sandy. She is terrified. Not to mention, it is hard to believe she eventually grew into an Orthodox Jew, because she looks a young Neva Small, had Neva converted to Catholicism. Which smart Neva never did.
It looks like curtains for Sandy, and even she knows the jig is up. But cheap floozy, yet good girl she ghost, Vi, steps in, causing Tom to fall to his death, saving the child.
The clincher is the next day, when both bodies are found, is that the corpse of Vi is found holding Tom in her arm, the ring on her wedding finger!
That Vi got him, all right!
"Torment" is just a riff on the "if I can't have you...." ploy. Thank God for Susan Gordon, those head shots, and that 'Haunted Hill' score.
Something to amuse yourselves with, on a rainy afternoon, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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