Director: John Huston
Cast: Paul Michael Glaser, Susan Hogan, John Colicos

I know that I have several times before mentioned that during my down times I like to think and ponder about many different kinds of subjects, but I would like to cover that topic again in this review. But I will this time talk about a subject I like to think about that I don't think I have mentioned before. The specific think I like to think about is... well... how the human mind works. There are so many things about the human mind that are interesting, from why we can't seem to remember anything we went through when we were infants, to how we can remember so many things from our past with just a very compact brain. But while I on occasion like to think of the achievements of the human mind, I am more fascinated by brain-related problems and ailments. I guess a reason for this is that many of them seem to be very scary stuff, and I want to understand these problems the best I can so that I would know what to do in case one day I started to have symptoms of these brain ailments. For example, there is the ailment known as multiple personality disorder. I have heard of several people with this ailment that have so many different personalities that I wonder just how they all fit in one brain, and I also wonder what makes the prime personality in such a patient's mind change seemingly at will. Then there are brain ailments such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The idea of getting one of those ailments gives me the chills, even though a look at my ancestors has revealed that there is no family history of one of those ailments. I wonder what during evolution millions of years ago created those crippling ailments in the human bloodstream, and why sometimes it seems to happen at random.

The human mind is so mysterious, so filled with both potential and various dangers, that it's easy to think of the various "big" conditions that can happen to it, such as what I described in the previous paragraph. But I happen to find many of the smaller quirks that can happen regarding the human mind to have a great amount of interest. As you no doubt have guessed from the title of the movie I am reviewing here today - Phobia - phobias are one of those smaller quirks of the mind that make me interested whenever I hear about them. One reason is that me myself suffer to a degree from a phobia. Whenever I am in a location that is significantly high off the ground, while I don't panic or get greatly upset, I do feel quite uncomfortable and uneasy. In other words, I have a slight case of acrophobia. If you were to ask me what the cause of my mild acrophobia was, I am afraid I wouldn't be able to answer that question for you; I have always felt that way whenever I've been at a great height, and to this day I try my best to avoid being in a precarious situation of great height off of the ground. But I know I am a lot better off than many people who have various types of phobias. I once watched a talk show where the topic of the day was people having severe phobias about everyday things. There was one man who had a severe phobia about peaches - he would stay far away from them whenever he went to the supermarket, and one day when he was taking a shower in his girlfriend's apartment and saw a shampoo bottle with a picture of a peach on it, he immediately ran out of the shower in a big panic.

When I saw the sight of that may reacting so badly when a plate of peaches was brought onto the stage of the talk show, I was begging to know why the man thought peaches were such a danger. I can understand a fear of heights, but what is so bad about fruit? Anyway, the idea of phobias has great potential in movies, because it involves fear - which can be mined for horror effect in so many ways. But it can just as easily be botched up, which is where the movie Phobia comes in. I first saw it as a teenager on late night Canadian television in the 1980s, and I thought at the time it stunk. But a few years ago, it was lifted out of obscurity and given a 4K restoration for DVD and Blu-ray. I decided to give it another chance, seeing it would be in pristine condition this time and not being forced to watch a murky and aged television print. In the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to Dr. Peter Ross (Paul Michael Glaser, Starsky & Hutch) a psychiatrist whose speciality is helping various patients overcome their deep phobias from fear of heights to fear of crowds, using a controversial treatment plan he concocted himself. Ross' professional and personal life are currently in a tangle, because while he has his loving girlfriend Jenny (Susan Hogan, An American Christmas Carol) in his life, he still has to work with Alice (Patricia Collins, Pin), who was his former love interest. But things soon start to get more stressful for Ross. One day, a patient of his is killed in his office by a bomb that was seemingly planted for him. Soon afterwards, his other patients start dying one by one in manners related to their deep phobias. Making matters worse is that Barnes (John Colicos, Breaking Point) the chief police detective of the case, has utter contempt for Ross and his unorthodox phobia treatments. Can the mystery be solved before Ross and all of his patients are knocked off?

Just five years previous to Phobia, director John Huston had directed The Man Who Would Be King, and now he was down to directing a Canadian tax shelter production. A report I uncovered claimed that a few years after directing Phobia, Huston made it clear to a reporter that he didn't want to discuss anything at all about the movie. I can't really blame him for clamming up; there is very little in the style of this movie that suggests it might be done by Huston or any other talented director. Instead, there's kind of a feeling that it was a rush job, with the bland locations and sets, frequent tight framing, the feeling the camera is often nailed down, and more often than not a really dull undercurrent, even when a person is knocked off in front of our eyes. The reason for these and some other major problems seems to be that not only is Huston seemingly bewildered by the material that he's working with, but also that he simply doesn't have the passion for the material in the first place. It seems odd to say the least that the producers of this movie would hire a veteran Hollywood director of serious films to direct a 1980s style horror thriller. Indeed, scene by scene goes by where what happened in the previous scene doesn't seem to have much (if any) consequences to influence what follows, further suggesting Huston didn't have a firm grasp on the material. Phobia uses. Occasionally Huston does manage to put in a brief burst of life, such as the memorable opening shot, or when one patient (Alexandra Stewart, The Uncanny) with agoraphobia attempts to take a ride on the subway; you can really feel the rising tension in that latter sequence. Apart from small isolated moments like those, and the fact that director Huston goes against the Canadian film industry norm and admits (albeit almost totally and very subtly) that the events of the movie are taking place in Canada, that's pretty much it when it comes to positive directorial touches.

The aforementioned aspects of Huston's direction certainly go a long way to explain why Phobia fails, but another key area where the movie trips up is with how the characters and actors are handled. To begin with, Huston can't seem to do much to coax his cast to act livelier. Actually, some of the minor supporting players, such the actors playing Dr. Ross' landlady and the patients of the therapy program, manage to be pretty impressive with the little material they're giving, making their characters colorful and sympathetic. And I have to admit that Canadian veteran actor John Colicos, playing the homicide detective, makes his character very memorable, being quite nasty but almost always staying at a believable level for someone in his position. As for the other leading players, well, they are nowhere as good. In his first leading role in a motion picture, Paul Michael Glaser seriously underacts. With his character's patients, associates, or loved ones, he acts in such a cold and impersonal way that it's really hard to believe that any of those people would want to have anything to do with him, professionally or personally. Even when he's by himself, he shows a clear lack of passion or drive for the activity his character is doing. Not much better are the performances of the two women in his character's life, played by Hogan and Collins; at best they deliver their lines and actions in a mediocre manner. But to be fair, they weren't actually given that much material to work with, with each of their characters on several occasions disappearing completely from the narrative for long periods of time. For that matter, all the characters in the movie aren't really examined up close. For instance, while Glaser's character is revealed to have an ex-wife and children back in California, and currently has a girlfriend as well as a colleague that in the past he was involved with, that's about all we learn about him. We learn almost nothing about his girlfriend or his colleague, by the way.

As you can imagine, with such severely underwritten characters in Phobia, it is impossible for the viewer to give a darn about any of them and what their fates might be. That includes any mystery as to who among the characters is the killer and why (s)he is doing them, especially since there is absolutely no mystery as to who the killer is. Thanks to a supposed sneaky aside comment by one character early in the movie, you will instantly know that person is the killer and have a reasonable idea as to why (s)he is killing. If somehow you miss that comment, not to worry - towards the end of the movie we are practically handed another glaring clue on a plate. That's bad enough, but making things worse are some real glaring plot holes that not only at times make us wonder how the killer managed to fit the killings in his/her schedule, but also knew for sure at some points where his/her victims would be and do at an exact time to make it easy for him/her to kill them. Even worse that all that bad writing I just mentioned is that because we know early on who the killer is, we can clearly see that many scenes serve absolutely no purpose except to elongate the story past the breaking point. If you do see the movie despite my warnings, just think a little about the insanely long sequence where one of the patients (David Bolt, Videodrome) is interrogated at length by the police, arrested, escapes, engages in a long car chase, climbs up a dilapidated building, threatens to jump off the building if Dr. Ross does not come, and... well, I think even if you don't see the movie, I've given you an accurate sense of just how Phobia has a severe case of microphobia. Added to everything else I have told you about this movie, you may understand why long before it ended, the movie gave me one of the definitions of thaasophobia.

(Posted October 20, 2024)