The Kirlian Witness (1978) User Reviews (8)

Intriguing Product of the "Occult Obsessed" 70s

[wkduffy · 7/10 · 28 October 2012]

The movie revolves around two sisters: One is a photographer who is married to an architect and lives a relatively normal life, and the other is a houseplant-obsessed, socially awkward isolationist who lives below her sister in a Soho loft and runs a slipshod plant shop. The weird one (well acted, by the way, as are all the parts) dies within the first 20 minutes of the film, and the rest of the movie revolves around her grieving sister trying to figure out how she died--accidentally or not? And if not, who did it?

Although the production year on this flick is 1979, the film feels as though it was made 10 years earlier and is a quintessential product of that occult-obsessed era. As such, the alternative sleuthing tactics used by the sister-cum-detective involves colorful Kirlian photography of auras (the auras of both plants and people) to determine who has ill intent and who knows what. The twist? Her architect-husband might be the murderer (or not) AND one special plant may have seen everything happen! What is that plant trying to say?!!

The feel of the film is serious and decidedly (and purposefully) muted -- the tone, the acting, the music, the photography. You might call it slow, but someone with the right sensibilities might instead call it "creepy." Indeed, the film strikes many of the same chords as horror films of the time period--we're talking about that atmosphere of hopeless Gothic dread and awful, depressing inevitability that drenches cult horror flicks like "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," "The Pyx," or "The Haunting of Julia" (largely created by the music and sometimes-abstract camera angles here in this film). But unfortunately these emotive moments are far and few between. Most importantly, it should be noted that this really is NOT a horror film at all. Although it has some occult overtones and that atmospheric feeling of dread, the story is a who-done-it mystery.

For someone who can plug into the film from this "atmospheric 1970s horror movie" angle (even though, as mentioned, you'd be hard pressed to call this a horror yarn!), "The Kirlian Witness" might be considered a rare gem--not a stellar flick, but a minor gem nonetheless. I got my copy on Amazon (in 2012), where it is currently available as an "on-demand" DVD-R with full color artwork in the DVD case and also on the disc itself. (For some reason, I half-think it is actually the director who is selling them himself, but this is pure speculation.) The transfer is workable, but as the fuzzy print testifies, this has in no way been remastered. In fact, I'd actually love to see a very clean copy of the film, but considering its relative obscurity, I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Comparable to early Cronenberg

[Roel1973 · 7/10 · 15 August 2015]

The title of this seventies oddity refers to Kirlian photography, which is the process of photographing living objects in an electromagnetic field which makes it look as if the objects have an aura. (According to skeptics the kirlian effect is nothing more than the object conducting an electric current). The film is not about Kirlian photography, however, it's about the implications of it: the fact that plants have an aura which reflects their mood.

Lauri (Nancy Boykin) owns a flower shop in the New York neighborhood of Soho. In her spare time she does research on telepathic contact with plants. When her sister Rilla (Nancy Snyder) introduces her new boyfriend Robert (Joel Colodner) she warns her sister: 'I sense… my plants sense he's a bad person.' When Lauri is found dead a little later, Rilla starts believing one of the plants must have witnessed the murder. With help from her dead sister's research Rilla learns how to establish telepathic contact with the plants and thus discover the identity of the killer.

The Kirlian Witness almost completely takes place in and around one apartment building in New York, and it has no more than a handful of characters. It makes for a claustrophobic viewing experience, full of quiet tension.

What makes The Kirlian Witness not only interesting, but also stand out within the sub genre of seventies paranormal thrillers, is its complete lack of sensationalism. It isn't comparable to say, The Fury (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979), The Medusa Touch (1978) or The Manitou (1978), to name a few of those movies, released around the same time.

If anything The Kirlian Witness is comparable to early Cronenberg movies because of its prosaic approach to the bizarre subject matter, its cold and bleak atmosphere and its detached stance towards its characters. Much like Cronenberg did with Scanners and The Brood writer-director Jonathan Sarno doesn't even try to convince the audience of the reality of his supernatural premise. Paradoxically enough, the viewer accepts it immediately as a given within the world of the film and is not distracted by any clumsily developed claims to authenticity which plagued most of the aforementioned films.

This was released on VHS in The Netherlands in the early eighties. I haven't seen it since anywhere.

The Plants are Watching

[godspellgroupie · 7/10 · 7 April 2010]

Another movie that flew under the radar and received little or no recognition.This film tells the story of a pretty young photographer who uses a special kind of photography to communicate with her plants an solve the murder of her sister. This is a low budget and dimly lit production that moves at a slow pace taking the time to help you get into the subject matter and help to buy and accept the premise so you should be patient and stay with it. The film does not totally endorse this method of crime solving because she has to ,in a way, cover her tracks. So,all in all this film is an interesting change of pace of the endless shootemups because it contains minimal violence and a real feel for city life and alternative solutions

Two green thumbs up!

[EyeAskance · 17 December 2003]

When a woman claiming to possess an unearthly connection to plant-life dies mysteriously, her sister, compelled to put to rest unanswered questions in the matter, begins an investigation of plant/human communication phenomena. Her shocking conclusion is that her sister's beloved houseplants are not only cogent key-witnesses to a murder, but they may also be attempting to warn her that she is in similar danger.

Despite some pardonable issues with seesaw pacing, this refreshingly original indie thiller intrigues with its open-minded and ineffably eccentric concept. Honorable performances and a nail-biting windup make this low-budget effort a most enjoyable surprise...possibly not so easy to attain, but worth tracking down.

6/10

What an odd movie

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 20 March 2021]

"For the first time on the screen a strange thriller that takes you into the psychic world of plants."

Yes, in 1979, people were talking to their plants, using biofeedback devices to hear from them and even singing to them. For everyone obsessed with the 80's, let me tell you, the 70's were way better.

Director Jonathan Sarno did post-graduate work in playwriting and directing at the Yale School of Drama under directors Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, Elia Kazan, Roberto Rosselini and novelist Jerzy Kozinski. He's an artist and yet here he is, making a horror movie about psychic plants, but life is great that way. Sarno wrote this, along with Lamar Sanders, and also produced the movie and acts in it.

I don't even know where to start with this movie. I mean, the phrase Kirlian is because the photographer detective at the heart of this movie, Rilla Hart, has a photo in this style that represents the energy field of the exotic plant that her sister Laurie owned before her death. And oh yeah, her sister could literally talk to that plant.

An occult low budget movie about talking plants and a psychic named Dusty who brags about how he has surpassed human existence and is one with the plants despite mainly working the night shift loaded trucks and also knows the exact moment that they will expire? What could make this better? How about a cameo by Lawrence Tierney as a police detective? Yeah, that'll do it.

There's another release of this called The Plants Are Watching that cuts a fair amount of footage, so go for this one. It's so twisty and oddball that it could pretty much be classified as an American giallo, what with its dream logic and ending which reminded me of The Cat o' Nine Tails. It's a relatively sexless journey through the same end of the world New York City as Driller Killer, but you know, with plants.

Honestly, this movie is way better than it has any right to be. In a perfect world, it would have been the first film that Sarno turned into a cult film and we'd be celebrating everything he made afterward instead of him going into making travel videos. There's honestly nothing else like it.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

In the credits, it thanks the owner of Day of the Triffids for the use of a scene from that movie. That man? Philip Yordan, whose strange movie Night Train to Terror is a nexus point in my strange film obsessions. Much like how the Church of Satan connects The Car, Tippi Hedren's Roar and Jayne Mansfield, that movie is the crux of so many of the pathways that researching weird films has led me down.

Have you watered your plants today? Or said something nice to them, at least?

[Coventry · 4/10 · 9 November 2018]

The world of horror/occult cinema is a wonderfully unpredictable place. I have been a horror fanatic for almost my entire life and I daresay that I have seen practically everything. I saw cannibal tribes devouring innocent people, serial killers painfully tormenting their agonizing victims and even I even watched babies getting impaled on spikes. None of these sights ever shocked or frightened me, though, but the simple alternate title and poster image of this obscure & low-budgeted thriller, I find strangely unnerving and eerie. "The Plants are Watching", and then the image of a tipped over plant next to the lifeless hand of a woman. You must admit that is somewhat uncanny, no? Well, I certainly think so.

"The Kirlian Witness", which is the official title, also brings forward some very original and intriguing themes but - unfortunately - it's too much of a poorly produced and amateurish effort to be entertaining. With better production values and slightly more competent cast & crew members, I'm sure this could have been a modest cult gem, but now it's destined to remain an obscure oddity for avid collectors. The idea of communicating with plants, and even depend on them as witnesses of vile crimes like murder, may sound foolish but actually it's quite compelling and suspenseful (given that the screenplay is better elaborated than here). Laurie is an introvert girl, obsessed with botanical flora and persuaded it's possible to telepathically communicate with plants. She's found murdered on the rooftop of her apartment complex one day, and since writer/director Jonathan Sarno could only afford Lawrence Tierney one single day for a cameo appearance as the Police Detective, it's up to Laurie's sister Rilla to identify the killer herself. Since there are only two main suspects, and one of them obviously did not do it, the script isn't exactly compelling or exciting. In fact, "The Kirlian Witness" is a painfully tedious film that only exists of lame conversations between 3 terrible actors and an endless amount of shots of Sansevierias hooked onto seismograph devices. There's one moment of spectacle, when someone makes a nasty fall down an elevator shaft, but that's also over in the blink of an eye. I'm giving it a generous rating 4/10, because I still very much like the main idea and because of the little shiver the title gave me, but it sadly can't be recommended.

slow pace

[bloody-3 · 3/10 · 14 March 2000]

The deadeningly slow pace is what ruins this picture. A woman whose sister was murdered uses kirlian photography to try and solve the crime. An interesting idea but a livelier script was needed. Lawrence Tierney has a brief cameo.

The Secret, somewhat dull, Life of Plants

[FieCrier · 4/10 · 26 August 2002]

Sort of a murder mystery with a weird thread running through it all - "plant communication," "kirlian photography," and to a much lesser degree: auras, meditation, "pyramid power" etc. The musical score is good, the acting decent, the story OK. This could have been more interesting and engaging, and is the sort of movie which could perhaps benefit from a remake.

Oh - and there's nothing involving dogs, spatulas, or warnings against going in the water, as another user wrote - perhaps he was thinking of another movie.