TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS

UK, 1973, 90 minutes, Colour.
Jack Hawkings, Donald Pleasence, Georgia Brown, Donald Houston, Suzy Kendall, Kim Novak, Michael Jayston, Peter Mc Enery.
Directed by Freddie Francis.

Director Freddie Francis has made an interesting series of psychological and/or honor films over the last ten years. Several of these have been collections of short horror stories like this.
It is not one of the best, but some of it is effective.

Jack Hawkins and Donald Pleasence tour an asylum, listening to the stories of four mad individuals: a boy who creates an imaginary tiger against his parents, Kim Novak in a voodoo story of cannibalism, and two very good stories involving Peter Mc Enery regressing into an Edwardian past and Michael Jayston personalising a murderous tree. The ending is mysterious and unexplained, yet expected. For horror fans.


1. Was this a good horror-film? How did it use the conventions of the horror-film? Well? The significance of the title?

2. What audience-response did the film want? To the background of the stories? The asylum background? To the people in the cells? To the stories and the madness?

3. Should films present explorations of madness? What effect do theyhave on audiences? Was this film a real exploration? Did it show any insight into madness? Imagination?

4. Was the structure of the film satisfactory? The background of the inspection, the doctor’s work, the continual returning to the doctor, the four stories, the final assembling of the characters? the final madness?

5. Was the climax predictable? Was it credible? Did it make sense of the whole film?

6. How interesting was the story of the boy? Was it predictable? Was it credible in the presentation of the boy talking to the tiger, the parents quarrelling, the school master aiding the boy’s imagination? Did the parents do the right thing in their incredulity? comment on the camera’s becoming subjective for the movements of the invisible tiger? Was the violence in harmony with the madness? Was such vindictiveness on behalf of the boy credible? The basic point of the story?

7. How interesting and absorbing was the second story? The young man and his shop, his girlfriend, his ordinariness? The cameras focusing on the photo of uncle Albert and the movement, of the eyes? How effective was this as cinema involving the audience? The acting of the man as he was drawn continually towards the bike? The drive into the past? The contrast of the period-costuming situation with the present? The faceless burnt man, the love theme and the vengeance? was the madness credible? What was the point behind the young man’s madness?

8. How absorbing was the story of the couple with the tree? Its ordinariness? Relationship between husband and wife? The place of the tree and its look? The way the camera focused on
the tree? The camera gradually personalizing the tree? The trick devices of branches and fingers? The confrontation of wife and tree? The dream of the husband? The final choice that he made for the tree instead of his wife? What point was being made about madness here? How successfully?

9. How well did the fourth story fit in with the rest? The focurs on Oriel and the madness in her mind? How effective was the voodoo background? How repellant? The contrast with modern London society? the flirting of Oriel, the daughter’s flirting? The irony of the gradual unfolding of the voodoo plot, the horror of the death, the ceremony of the banquet and the eating of the daughter? What point of madness was being made here?

10. How successful as tales of mystery and imagination were the individual stories?

11. What was the truth behind the madness?