The Medusa Touch (film)
Encyclopedia
The Medusa Touch is a 1978 British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 thriller film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 directed by Jack Gold
Jack Gold
Jack Gold is a British film and television director. He was part of the British Realist Tradition that followed Free Cinema.-Career:...

. It starred Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

, Lino Ventura
Lino Ventura
Lino Ventura , was an Italian actor who starred in French movies.-Biography:Born as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, "Lino" dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs...

, Lee Remick
Lee Remick
Lee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...

 and Harry Andrews
Harry Andrews
Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE was an English film actor known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the...

, with cameos by Alan Badel
Alan Badel
Alan Fernand Badel was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared frequently in the cinema, radio and television and was noted for his richly textured voice which was once described as "the sound of tears".-Early life:...

, Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

, Gordon Jackson
Gordon Jackson (actor)
Gordon Cameron Jackson, OBE was a Scottish Emmy Award-winning actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals....

, Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett
Jeremy Brett , born Peter Jeremy William Huggins, was an English actor, most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in four Granada TV series.-Early life:...

 and Michael Hordern
Michael Hordern
Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...

. The screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

 was by John Briley
John Briley
John Richard Briley is an American writer best known for screenplays of biopics. He won the Academy Award For Best Original Screenplay at the 1982 Oscars for Gandhi...

, based on the novel The Medusa Touch
The Medusa Touch
The Medusa Touch is a 1973 novel by Peter Van Greenaway, which was adapted fairly faithfully into a feature film in 1978.The novel tells the story of a radically disenchanted novelist with highly destructive telekinetic powers. Its dialogue was described in Kim Newman's book Nightmare Movies as...

by Peter Van Greenaway
Peter Van Greenaway
Peter Van Greenaway was a British novelist, the author of numerous thrillers with elements of horror and satire.He was born and educated in London, worked briefly in commercial art and acted in theatre....

.

Plot summary

A French detective, Brunel, is on an exchange scheme in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He is assigned to investigate the murder of novelist John Morlar
John Morlar
John Frederick Morlar is a fictional character in the novel and film The Medusa Touch. The novel was written by Peter Van Greenaway and published in 1973; the film was released in 1978, starring Richard Burton as Morlar....

. As they examine the crime scene, the policemen find that the victim is actually still alive in spite of his severe injuries and have him rushed to hospital.

With the help of Morlar's journals and Dr. Zonfeld, a psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

 whom the author had started visiting, Brunel reconstructs Morlar's past life. Seen in flashback, it is filled with inexplicable catastrophes, including the tragic deaths of people he disliked or who offended him.

Morlar is, in fact, a psychic with powerful telekinetic abilities. Disgusted at the world (in his 1988 book Nightmare Movies, Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...

 described Morlar's dialogue as "incredibly misanthropic
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...

"), Morlar has caused two recent disasters: an airliner crash and the loss of a manned spacecraft.

From his hospital bed, he manages to bring down a cathedral on the "unworthy heads" of a VIP congregation giving thanks for the building's preservation. Morlar seems able to keep himself alive by sheer willpower. An enraged Brunel himself tries to finish Morlar off and fails. The man has written on a pad the name of his next target - the nuclear power station at Windscale
Sellafield
Sellafield is a nuclear reprocessing site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield is an off-shoot from the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale which is currently undergoing...

.

Production

Bristol Cathedral
Bristol Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity is the Church of England cathedral in the city of Bristol, England, and is commonly known as Bristol Cathedral...

 was used as the location for the fictional London place of worship called Minster Cathedral.

Film and novel

The film follows the plot of Van Greenaway's novel fairly closely, but changes several details.
  • In the novel, the detective is not a Frenchman but an English character named Inspector Cherry, who appears in several other Van Greenaway books.
  • In the novel Zonfeld is male and is a Holocaust survivor whose experience of Sachsenhausen concentration camp
    Sachsenhausen concentration camp
    Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...

     contributes to his eventual suicide
    Suicide
    Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

    .
  • At the end of the book, Morlar's hand does not scrawl Windscale but Holy Loch
    Holy Loch
    The Holy Loch is a sea loch in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.Robertson's Yard at Sandbank, a village on the loch, was a major wooden boat building company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....

    , the site of an American nuclear submarine
    Nuclear submarine
    A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor . The performance advantages of nuclear submarines over "conventional" submarines are considerable: nuclear propulsion, being completely independent of air, frees the submarine from the need to surface frequently, as is necessary for...

     base.

Cast

  • Richard Burton
    Richard Burton
    Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

     as John Morlar
    John Morlar
    John Frederick Morlar is a fictional character in the novel and film The Medusa Touch. The novel was written by Peter Van Greenaway and published in 1973; the film was released in 1978, starring Richard Burton as Morlar....

  • Lino Ventura
    Lino Ventura
    Lino Ventura , was an Italian actor who starred in French movies.-Biography:Born as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, "Lino" dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs...

     as Brunel
  • Lee Remick
    Lee Remick
    Lee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...

     as Doctor Zonfeld
  • Harry Andrews
    Harry Andrews
    Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE was an English film actor known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the...

     as Assistant Commissioner
  • Alan Badel
    Alan Badel
    Alan Fernand Badel was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared frequently in the cinema, radio and television and was noted for his richly textured voice which was once described as "the sound of tears".-Early life:...

     as Barrister
  • Marie-Christine Barrault
    Marie-Christine Barrault
    Marie-Christine Barrault is a French actress, who has appeared in 45 films and numerous television productions.Born in Paris, she got her start on television, in L'Œuvre, in 1967 and in the series Que ferait donc Faber? Her film debut was in 1969 in My Night at Maud's in 1969.In 1970 Barrault...

     as Patricia
  • Jeremy Brett
    Jeremy Brett
    Jeremy Brett , born Peter Jeremy William Huggins, was an English actor, most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in four Granada TV series.-Early life:...

     as Edward Parrish
  • Michael Hordern
    Michael Hordern
    Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...

     as Atropos - Fortune Teller
  • Gordon Jackson
    Gordon Jackson (actor)
    Gordon Cameron Jackson, OBE was a Scottish Emmy Award-winning actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals....

     as Doctor Johnson
  • Michael Byrne
    Michael Byrne (actor)
    Michael Byrne is an English actor noted for his roles on film and television. He has often been cast in Nazi military roles such as Colonel Vogel in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik in the BBC radio dramatisation of the novel Fatherland by Robert Harris...

     as Duff
  • Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

     as Townley - Publisher
  • Robert Lang
    Robert Lang (actor)
    Robert Lang was an English actor of stage and television. Laurence Olivier invited him to join the new National Theatre Company, at the Old Vic, Robert Lang was already earning high praise as an actor. From 1971 until his death he was married to Ann Bell, best known for her portrayal of Marion...

     as Pennington
  • Avril Elgar
    Avril Elgar
    Avril Elgar is an English stage, radio and television actress.She trained at the London Old Vic Theatre School...

     as Mrs. Pennington
  • John Normington
    John Normington
    John Normington was an English actor who appeared widely on British television from the 1960s until the year of his death. Normington was also a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company performing in more than 20 RSC productions...

     as Schoolmaster
  • Robert Flemyng
    Robert Flemyng
    Robert Flemyng OBE, MC was a British film and stage actor.Flemyng was born in Liverpool, the son of a doctor, and was educated at Haileybury. He began his career as a medical student before abandoning medicine to become an actor. Flemyng made his stage debut in the early 1930s, and worked steadily...

     as Judge McKinley
  • Philip Stone
    Philip Stone
    Philip Stone was an English actor.He was born Philip Stones in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Stone appeared in three successive Stanley Kubrick films: playing the central character's "Dad" in A Clockwork Orange , "Graham" in Barry Lyndon and as "Delbert Grady," the original caretaker in The Shining...

     as Dean
  • Malcolm Tierney
    Malcolm Tierney
    Malcolm Tierney is an English actor who has appeared in many film and television roles.His roles include the part of Tommy McArdle in Brookside between 1983 and 1987, Charlie Gimbert in Lovejoy, Geoffrey Ellsworth-Symthe in A Bit of a Do, Patrick Woolton in House of Cards and Chief Const. Raymond...

     as Deacon
  • Norman Bird
    Norman Bird
    Norman Bird was a British character actor. Often sporting a moustache and an air of worried resignation, he seemed to specialise in downtrodden roles...

     as Father
  • Jennifer Jayne
    Jennifer Jayne
    Jennifer Jayne was an English film and television actress.Her name at birth was Jennifer Jones, which she altered in order to avoid confusion with Jennifer Jones, the Hollywood actress...

     as Mother
  • James Hazeldine
    James Hazeldine
    James Hazeldine was a British film, stage and television actor. He was born in Salford, Lancashire.James started his career in repertory theatre, firstly in weekly rep, then at the Manchester Library theatre and on to the Royal Court Theatre in London's Sloane Square, where he appeared in the...

    as Lovelass
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