Medusa
MEDUSA. 1973

Director: Gordon Hessler

Reviewed by Paghat the Ratgirl



Filmed in Rhodes, Medusa (1973) manages to find too few interesting vistas or locations for its hardly-worth-telling story. The film occasionally looks well-budgeted & well made though void of intelligence. At other points it has the feel of a dashed-together telefilm.

George Hamilton as international jetsetter Jeffrey passes for the film's "big" star striving to snuggle into a stupid story by overacting at the farthest edge of hammy. He first arrives in the story as a corpse narrating the tale himself. To explain how he came to be dead, the flashback begins.

We are next introduced to him as a drunken Elvis impersonator crashing a traditional Greek wedding he's not been invited to, seemingly carrying a torch for the bride, though she's his sister (Lucianna Paluzzi).

Cameron Mitchell as the gangster Angelo has Jeffrey by the short ones due to high living while deep in debt. Angelo uses Jeffrey for criminal activities to work off a couple hundred thousand lost to gambling. Angelo is a kidnapper & killer whose sundry crimes during the first half hour of the film don't add up to much of a story & it all gets tiresome trying to hold the many disperate elements in memory waiting for any of it to mean anything.

Jeffrey will presumedly do just about anything illegal except murder, & turns out he'll even do that. He has no conscience about anything. His only goal is to be able to continue to live as a playboy jetsetter wastrel.

Cameron & George turn in good enough performances, especially Cameron as a convincingly creepy psycho mobster. As murder & revelations of incest mount, story threads trail off without resolution. It all comes to a tragic end, as the prologue had promised, but it remains darned hard to care.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl



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