^ 343-1182
29th 9 Willamette
(behind Petty’s Pizza)
movie review
watch out for Watcher’
By MATT MEYER
Of ttw Emerald
An ad for "Saturday the 14th"
boasts it is "the number-one
horror-comedy spoof of the
year " The ad is wrong
"The Watcher in the Woods"
has to be the funniest horror
picture made this year
Problem is, the film is sup
posed to be serious
A family rents a huge, ancient
British house The owner, an old
woman (Bette Davis, of all peo
ple), is a little spooky
As the story goes, her
daughter mysteriously disap
peared in a fire during a total
eclipse of the sun Suddenly,
the two girls of the family,
played by Kyle Richards and
Lynn-Holly Johnson, start hear
ing voices and seeing strange
things, such as images of a
blindfolded girl, Johnson's age,
beckoning to her
Johnson tries to unravel this
deep, dark mystery The story is
full of classic lines from the
wide-eyed, pouty-mouthed
Johnson, like the ominous. "I
don't know why hut I feel that
something terrible has hap
pened here," or the determined,
"I'm not sure exactly why, Mom,
but this is something I've just
gotta do "
"Watcher in the Woods" is —
well incredible
It's extremely difficult to grant
Johnson credibility, no matter
how pouty she gets Kyle Rich
ards is such a precocious
little sister that you start to hope
she'll be found hanging in one
of the gnarled trees that are
constantly popping up through
out the picture
David McCallum. who plays
i
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the girls' father, is so embar
rassed that he disappears for
half of the movie, presumably to
rejoin the U N C L E forces
Even Bette Davis shows up
badly in this picture She gets so
crotchety you begin to wonder
why her daughter would possi
bly want to return from the time
warp imprisoning her
Although director John
Hough hasn't spent much time
working with his cast, he has
been doing his homework He
seems to have watched "Jaws'
enought to copy Spielberg's lit
tle jabs a big buildup to a dinky
joke shockers that come from
out of nowhere and comic relief
when we re scared by a flapping
bird only to be zapped five
seconds later by something
really scary
Unlike "Jaws," the char
acters aren't even remotely
believable, and the whole es
capade becomes a farce
Surprisingly enough, there
are good points to the movie
Special effects are numerous,
and on the whole, pretty good
The camera work is very good,
but unfortunately Hough turns
the camera to foggy dales or old
‘trees whenever he can’t think of
anything else to shoot
Luckily, the film was shot in a
picturesque part of Scotland,
and even the repetitive trees
come out well
It s too bad it all goes to
waste The film crumbles when
the exceptionally weak script
gives way Even TV's Nancy
Drew wouldn't take an hour to
figure out that a black circle
overlapping a picture of the sun
might be related to a solar
eclipse
Even Shaun Cassidy as a
Hardy Boy could figure it out
But not Lynn-Holly Johnson
After the previews were over
Walt Disney's company name.
Buena Vista, flashed on the
screen over a sea of orange
"Oh, good," my wife said a
cartoon!”
She was right
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