The Watcher in the Woods (1980) DVDRip (SiRiUs sHaRe) torrent

The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

When a normal American family moves into a beautiful old English house in a wooded area, strange, paranormal appearances befall them in this interesting twist to the well-known haunted-house tale. Their daughter Jan sees, and daughter Ellie hears, the voice of a young teenage girl who mysteriously disappeared during a total solar eclipse decades before...

Bette Davis ... Mrs. Aylwood
Lynn-Holly Johnson ... Jan Curtis
Kyle Richards ... Ellie Curtis
Carroll Baker ... Helen Curtis
David McCallum ... Paul Curtis
Benedict Taylor ... Mike Fleming
Frances Cuka ... Mary Fleming
Richard Pasco ... Tom Colley
Ian Bannen ... John Keller
Katharine Levy ... Karen Aylwood (uncredited in the shortened 1981 release)
Eleanor Summerfield ... Mrs. Thayer
Georgina Hale ... Young Mrs. Aylwood

Director: John Hough / Vincent McEveety (uncredited)

Runtime: 84 mins

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081738/

Codecs:

Video : 636 MB, 1113 Kbps, 25.0 fps, 672*368 (16:9), XVID = XVID Mpeg-4,
Audio : 109 MB, 192 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, 0x2000 = AC3 DVM, CBR,

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It\'s an interesting contrast to experience Bette Davis in a Disney family suspense thriller--maybe the scariest Disney flick ever made. If anyone could have been more mysterious & bewitchingly secretive, I can\'t imagine who. I have the 1998 VHS that has a cover with a marvelous photograph of Davis on the back.

Florence Engel Randall\'s plot in her novel, \"A Watcher in the Woods,\" goes like this: The Curtis family, Helen (Carroll Baker), her husband Paul (David McCullum), & their 2 daughters, Jan (Lynn-Holly Johnson) & Ellie (Kyle Richards), rent an old English manor from it\'s owner, Mrs. Aylwood (Bette Davis), who lives in the guest cottage. The lady of the manor seems to be haunting, mean & eerily eccentric.

Jan experiences some paranormal events immediately after moving into the manor. For one thing, she can\'t see her own reflection in a bedroom mirror. Then, Jan begins to strongly sense that someone is watching her in the woods. Neither Helen nor Paul are keen about the girls spending time with Mrs. Aylwood. But, as Jan becomes more scared & curious about who or what is in the woods, the pre-teen begins investigating, starting with Mrs. Aylwood.

After Jan goes into Mrs. Aylwood\'s cottage to talk with her about the mysterious phenomena that she\'s noticed, the secret of the woods starts to be revealed by Mrs. Aylwood. Although she\'s very reluctant to talk about it, Mrs. Aylwood tells Jan the story about her pre-teen daughter\'s disappearance in the same woods 30 years ago.

The supernatural cinematic effects are well done. Bette Davis\' subdued performance as a mysterious older woman makes the show a spine-tingling thriller. The suspense builds to a climax that is not predictable. The settings are spot-on & befitting for a haunted mood.

Keeping in mind that the genre of this movie is a family suspense suitable for children, I found it to be excellent.

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This movie terrified me as a child. So I ran across it and had to buy it. I was expecting it to be horrible and cheesy as an adult, but I was wrong.

This movie has some scary parts, even to adults, and I\'ve watched hundreds of horror movies. This one still creates a few chills.

The basic plot is that a family moves to a new house next to some spooky old lady. One of the daughters starts seeing weird things, like a blind-folded girl in the mirror. She also learns the spooky old-lady neighbor had a daughter that disappeared about 20 or 30 years ago. She investigates this mystery despite the scary things that happen.

I promise this movie will at least give you a few chills. The creepy girl in the mirror still freaks me out. It\'s hard to believe this was a Disney film.

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\"The Watcher In The Woods\" is about a family who moves into an English manor located deep in the woods. The two sisters, Jan (Lyn-Holly Johnson) and Ellie (Kyle Richards), begin to experience strange phenomenon and sense a dark presence in the woods surrounding the house and they believe that the strange caretaker of the house, Mrs. Aylwood (played by the brilliant Bette Davis) has the answer. As time goes on, the mystery begins to unravel, and Jan and Ellie must discover what happened to Mrs. Aylwood\'s daughter, who went missing in the woods years before, or they may become victims themselves. But what exactly is the presence in the woods? It seems to be watching them, and nobody knows what it will do next.

I remember picking this film off the shelf at the local video store in my small town when I was about six or seven years old (back when I was an avid Scooby-Doo fan, which I believe triggered my love for the horror genre). My parents let me get it, thinking it would be rather harmless since it was a Disney video. Boy, were they wrong! It scared me so badly I couldn\'t sleep for about a week. The fact that I lived in the middle of the woods didn\'t help much either. \"The Watcher In The Woods\" is an eerie and entertaining little horror/mystery, that is targeted as a family film. Based on a novel, the story is rather original, with a few clichés scattered about. For the most part though, the plot is excellently crafted.

There are plenty of creepy scenes in this movie that I won\'t ever forget. That image of the blindfolded girl in the mirror is truly haunting, and was one of the distinct images that terrified me as a kid. The eerie \'presence\' in the woods is presented nicely, and the mystery-drenched story kept me guessing until the end. The cinematography of the surrounding forest is eerie, and the musical score adds to the atmosphere of the movie. The acting in the film isn\'t anything wonderful. Bette Davis is outstanding as usual, but she isn\'t given a whole lot to work with. Lyn-Holly Johnson, our leading girl, is pretty poor. She\'s loud, her delivery is sometimes obnoxious, and her facial expressions are corny. Carroll Baker and David McCallum play the parents well, and Kyle Richards (who starred as an annoying little girl in the horror classic \"Halloween\" two years earlier) is good in her role as the little sister. The acting in this film is irrelevant to me though, because the entire tone and atmosphere is what really makes it stand out for me.

Overall, \"The Watcher In The Woods\" is a movie that I\'ll always hold in my heart as a classic because of the nostalgia factor and the memories it brings back from childhood. I luckily found it on DVD and couldn\'t help but buy it. It isn\'t a perfect movie, but it still is effective in it\'s eeriness and I enjoy watching it occasionally, and probably always will. I\'d advise you not to show it to the younger kids though, because it might terrify them as it did to me and many others. Again, not perfect by any means, but I personally love it. It\'s a bit campy, but it\'s nostalgic creepiness will always stand out. Definitely not something you would have expected from Disney, but rewarding nonetheless. 9/10.

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* The house that Mr. Keller lives in also served as Hill House, in the original version of Shirley Jackson\'s The Haunting (1963/I).

* The original version ran 100 minutes. This was with the then-undisputed ending tacked on. After the original ending didn\'t work, the filmmakers re-cut it, adding new footage in place of the old footage, and filmed a special effects sequence in which the viewer sees the other world that the victim was trapped in. This ending still didn\'t fare well with the critics, so John Hough hired a new cinematographer and they deleted all the footage that had been in the climax, and shot completely new footage including a new ending/explanation.

* \'Diane Lane\' auditioned for the film.

* Director John Hough was not involved in the ending re-shoots.

* The Anchor Bay DVD release was originally going to be a two-disc set, with both the famous original 100 minute cut that test audiences saw (Anchor Bay found the footage that was thought destroyed, and was going to re-edit it as close as possible to the preview version) and the theatrical 84 minute cut. Unfortunately Disney did not allow Anchor Bay to have the original cut, and only let them use the two \"alternate endings\" which now appear on the DVD. This explains why director John Hough referring to the movie as being finally edited the way he intended (the commentary was recorded before Anchor Bay had to drop the two-disc idea), when it actually isn\'t. The alternate endings, however, do provide the majority of the missing footage from the 1981 preview, save some small scenes/changes. Hough explains that \"his\" ending is a combination of the two alternate endings and the film\'s current ending.

* This was to be Disney\'s first PG-rated movie. However, poor test screening convinced the studio to re-shoot the ending and hold the release until April 1980 (and it bombed). Thus, The Black Hole (1979) became the first Disney movie with a PG rating.

* In the Anchor Bay DVD commentary, John Hough states that Bette Davis wanted to play both Mrs. Aylwood in the present and thirty years ago. The crew shot scenes with her wearing makeup to appear younger, but she was clearly older than the character the script called for. After the cast and crew saw the dailies, Hough told Davis in private that the scene just didn\'t work; no one would believe her as a woman in her forties. To her credit, Davis looked Hough in the eye and said, \"You\'re Goddamned right.\"

* Also in the DVD commentary, John Hough states that Brian Clemens wrote the version of the screenplay he was most interested in directing, but Disney decided that this version was much too dark, and hired Rosemary Anne Sisson to lighten it up.

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