Echoes (1982) User Reviews (5)

Mama's baby boy meets his rival...through dreams.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 21 March 2023]

It's unfortunate that the handsome but bland Richard Alfieri as artist Michael Durant to come up against veteran actresses Ruth Roman (as his beautiful sophisticated mother), Mercedes McCambridge and Gale Sondergaard, playing pivotal parts in his desperation to deal with a series of realistic nightmares that have him wondering how truth and fantasy are so closely related. Psychic Sondergaard listens carefully and questions cautiously, finally coming up with possibilities that totally shakes up his world. McCambridge, as his agent, isn't much involved in the plot other than to shatter his dreams of becoming more successful. Beautiful Nathalie Nell plays his love interest, spooked away by his seeming neurosis, getting worse and worse after she moves in with him.

A weird gothic thriller isn't aided by the TV movie like plot (up there with all of those campy supernatural thrillers of the 1970's), but the presence of the three veteran actresses (two Oscar winners) does add a feeling of curiosity to the film, with Sondergaard (in her last film appearance) standing out, still as regal as she was back in her 1936 film debut. Roman, much more than just an Ava Gardner lookalike, has great presence, making the most of the scene where she reveals a truth about her pregnancy. Unfortunately, Alfieri never gets to be much more than mearly efficient, even when playing the lookalike in his dreams. Or are they dreams? The weird wrap up of the film is quite perplexing and left me with more questions than answers, even though I figured out what was supposed to have occurred, which was rather depressing. The presence of the nasty cat in the beginning seemed to be a reference to Sondergaard's black cat like image in all those 1940's comic melodramas, and simply got dropped after that opening.

Flick cat out of window!

[Bezenby · 2/10 · 23 July 2010]

Starring: No one, really.

Echoes is a film that opens up well enough and, even though I wasn't expecting much, it still let me down. It was like watching Emmerdale Farm, only with the television switched off, my body encased in concrete, and me being dead.

A struggling artist (Get a real job!) in New York keeps having nightmares where he's running around the distant past getting harassed by a moustachioed fiend. His name is Michael and he's got the hots for some ballet girl, while his equally moustachioed friend has the hots for a ballet guy. Both are successful, and in the case of the friend you can tell which one is the sponge and which is stone.

Things are nicely set up when the fiend from Michael's dreams kind of manifests himself and flicks Michael's cat out of the window. We also get treated to a sex scene, all within about fifteen minutes of the film beginning, which isn't too bad for this kind of film. However, once the film has drawn us in, it makes itself oh-so slowly clear that nothing of any consequence is really going to happen by treating us to people having lunch, having dinner, arguing, looking moody on rooftops, growing stubble, not sleeping, wandering around a bit, reconciling, falling out with friends, having more lunch and struggling with an awaking long dead twin brother who is also the reincarnation of Michael's previous incarnation's brother.

There's little to no suspense in this one and I passed out at around the one hour fifteen mark, only to stupidly rewind back fifteen minutes and realise that I'd missed nothing but Michael running between a psychic and his mother. The very few last minutes insert some kind of 'action' when the fiend gets it both in a flashback and in a car chase involving one car. How do you kill a ghost in a car crash anyway? Very poor, this one. Horror fans don't need family tension or reconciliation – they want pitchforks through necks and some spookiness. In general this is a fairly pointless exercise on every level and I can't recommend it even for one sitting. Avoid.

I give it 57 out of whgai489htwe

Incredibly boring garbage.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 1/10 · 5 November 2007]

Art student Richard Alfieri keeps dreaming that his twin brother—who died before birth—is determined to kill him and take over his body.Insanely melodramatic and extremely boring drama with no horror whatsoever.The suspense is completely absent as is the gore.After finishing one hour of this turd I was so utterly bored that I decided to rewind the rest of "Living Nightmare".I can't believe that this pile of garbage was actually released on DVD and so many real horror films are still obscure and unavailable for mass consumption.I rarely give low budget horror movies the lowest rating possible,however this one truly deserves a big fat 1 out of 10.

No Terror, but Past that Echoes into the present

[celia-jou · 7/10 · 23 January 2007]

Echoes, AKA Living Nightmare, is not a horror flick. We follow a gifted artist who has a recurring nightmare, increasingly real and disturbing to Micheal Durant (Alfieri) who also plays his past life self, the Spanish artist Serrano. "The last thing I see," he tells girlfriend Christine (Nell), "the image that haunts me, is his face. Half in light. Half in shadow." Micheal wrestles with the meaning and power in this nightmare, and his strength to put his past life self to rest, with the help of psychic Gale Sondergaard. What's fascinating is the intensity of light and shadow, as well as stark close up, and background mirrors, clowns, murals, nudity and faces you have to be quick to see. Agreed, the music is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's Twilight Zone meets church organ. John Spencer (West Wing) makes a memorable appearance as friend Stephen. Paul Joynt plays a snobby rival, Ruth Roman is endearing as Micheals mother. The dialogue is uneven, but if past lives, psychics and the thin lines between artistic and insane, dream and reality interest you, there's lots here for you.

Disappointing supernatural suspense pic

[lor_ · 2 February 2023]

My review was written in November 1983 after watching the movie on a VidAmerica video cassette.

Filmed in Manhattan in 1980 and currently available on video cassette, "Echoes" is a romantic suspense picture with a supernatural plot device which doesn't pay off. Despite a good cas, film lacks the urgency and spectacular effects to attract attention in the thriller market (pic had a brief L. A. theatrical run earlier this year).

Richard Alfieri toplines (and pleasantly sings the out-theme) as Michael Durant, a Gotham art student who not surprisingly falls in love with Christine (played by the beautiful French actress Nathalie Nell), a successful ballet dancer. Durant, who has asthma causing wheezing attacks, is plagued by recurring nightmares in which he is caught in the arms of a woman by a mustachioed man who stabs and drowns him.

On the advice of his pal Stephen (John Spencer), Durant visits a psychic (Gale Sondergaard) who informs him he is the reincarnation of a Spanish artist who lived in the 19th Century. Questioning his mother (Ruth Roman) Durant becomes convinced his unborn twin brother (the fetus miscarried during pregnancy) was the reincarnation of the killer from his memory-dream, and he hallucinates the man as an apparition pursuing him on the subway and at a party.

Though Alfieri is a handsome, engaging actor, the role has him becoming boorish and very unsympathetic as he becomes consumed with his dream. His art career, managed by gallery owner Lillian Gerber (Mercedes McCambridge) goes nowhere; he drives away Christine with his unreasonable possessiveness and is booted out of art class by his teacher (played by the late Mike Kellin). Anti-climax has a car accident resolving the dream paranoia, with a happy ending unconvincingly tacked-on.

Main defect in Richard J. Anhony's screenplay is that Chrisitne bears no relationship to the anti-hero's dream-life. In romantic supernatural tales, some mythic or emotional resonance is usually created by linking characters on more than one level of existence, but that doesn't occur here, leaving a void. As directed by Seidelman, the strong supernatural factor comes off as merely a gimmick.

Thesping is fine down he line, with Gale Sondergaard particularly persuasive among the vet talent as a psychic. Cinematographer Hanania Baer contributes a stunning opening crane shot in Manhattan's theatre district, not matched by the mundane dream sequences that follow.