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Dark Echo
Dark Echoes / Deep Echo
Austria/Yugoslavia 1977
produced by George Robotham for Forty First Avala Film, Benedict Productions
directed by George Robotham
starring Karin Dor, Joel Fabiani, Wolfgang Brook, Hanna Hertelendy, John Robotham, Norman Marshall, Frederick Tully, James Dobson, Alex Davion, Neda Arneric, Goran Sultanovic, Janez Vrhovec, Damir Mejovsek, Mira Nikolic, Dusan Tadic, Vladan Zivkovic, Demeter Bitenc, Melisa Antic, Tanja Boskovic, Dragan Bjelogrlic
written by George Robotham, music by Sanja Ilic, Slobodan Markovic
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Someone is killing the fishermen of a small Austrian village by a lake,
and since the local chief of police Woelke (Wolfgang Brook) isn't much of
a mystery solver, he brings in his friend, psychic Bill Cros (Joel
Fabiani), to do some investigating for him. Bill soon finds out the whole
killing spree has to do with captain Gohr (Norman Marshall) whose boat
sunk on the lake 100 years ago, and who was blamed for the disaster. Now
it seems the captain has returned and is out to kill the descendants of
those who were on board with him. David finds an old mystic, Ms Ziemler
(Hanna Hertelendy), who is obviously one of Gohr's descendants and who has
been instrumental in bringing him back to life. However, at one point the
(by now terribly decayed) captain attacks her minions, and eventually he
even beheads her. Bill tries his best to catch up with the captain, but
has enough time to become friendly with a local journalist, Lisa Brueckner
(Karin Dor), but she's on Gohr's killlist as well, and eventually she is
almost killed by him before he is scared away by a mirror. You see, the
captain was very handsome, so his decayed mirror image hurts his pride and
scares the living shit out of him. Bill soon finds a way to use this
against him, so he arms a gang of youngsters with mirrors and has them
drive Gohr over a cliff, where he falls off into the lake to his death ...
though I'm not 100% sure you can kill an undead this way. A
horror movie that fails to convince on almost all levels: It's about a
zombie that can be fought using mirrors - I mean, really? But that
wouldn't even matter so much if the film had a decent buildup of suspense
... only it hasn't. Instead it spends way too much time establishing what
a cool guy the lead character is (supposed to be) and that he likes women
and cocktails. The murders on the other hand happen at random at first,
and when the mystic is thrown into the mix about halfway through, it's as
if she was a device to kickstart an already dead story - but only with
limited success, her actual meaning to the narrative of the film remains
murky. However, all of this might still have worked if it was carried by
an atmospheric direction - but unfortunately, director Robotham fails to
make any good use of the impressive Austrian landscapes at hand, uses his
camera merely to record the action at hand rather than to build upon it. Not
really worth your time.
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