VideoVista covers rental and retail titles in all genres and movie or TV categories, with filmmaker interviews, auteur profiles, top 10 lists,
plus regular prize draws.
HOME PAGE
INDEX OF ALL REVIEWS
SEARCH THIS SITE
COMPETITIONS
FORTHCOMING REVIEWS
TOP 10 LISTS
INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
RETRO REVIEWS SECTION
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS
READERS' COMMENTS
SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER
SITE MAP
LINKS
SUPPORT THIS SITE -
SHOP USING THESE LINKS
visit other Pigasus Press sites...
The ZONE - genre nonfiction
Soundchecks - music reviews
Rotary Action - helicopter movies
|
July 2010
cast: Judy Geeson, Martin Potter, Alexis Kanner, and Michael Redgrave
director: Alan Gibson
86 minutes (15) 1970
widescreen ratio 1.78:1
Odeon DVD Region 2 retail
RATING: 7/10
review by Gary Couzens
|
Goodbye Gemini
Jacki (Judy Geeson) and Julian (Martin Potter) are twin brother and sister, and very close, even dressing alike. However, there's a sinister
side to them, not least when they arrange the death of their housekeeper in an apparent fall. Arriving in London, they become part of the more
hedonistic, and more than a little gay, part of a local social scene. They come to the attention of debt-ridden gambler Clive (Alexis Kanner)
who embroils them in a blackmail scheme.
I have in my possession an old issue of Books & Bookmen magazine from 1964 (the year I was born - my late grandmother passed on
the batch of magazines to me). On the front cover is the then twentysomething Jenni Hall, whose novel Ask Agamemnon, a suspense thriller,
had just been published. The next big thing, perhaps? Clearly not: Amazon lists used copies of later novels by Ms Hall from up to 1970, and the
IMDb, as well as this film, records a screenwriting credit also from 1970. I have not been able to trace if she continued to write, or indeed
if she is still alive. I read Ask Agamemnon from my local library in the early 1980s. I remember not being especially impressed. Still,
it did create a stir and the film rights sold. The result, six years later, is Goodbye Gemini, released as Twinsanity in the USA.
(Agamemnon is the twins' teddy bear and confidante, by the way.)
The lapse of time is presumably to allow film censorship to catch up with what was allowable in the written word. The film is not subtle in
depicting incestuous attraction between the two twin siblings, at least on Julian's side. And the depiction of the more decadent side of 1960s'
London at the end of its swing - a very gay world inhabited by drag queens and even a drag stripper - might not have got past the BBFC much
earlier. As it is, they cut the film before passing it for adults only with an X certificate. Now it's available uncut with a 15.
Goodbye Gemini was marketed as a horror film but it isn't really - it's more a slow-burning character-based thriller, capably handled
by Alan Gibson, who would go on to make a couple of later Hammer films (Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites Of Dracula) before
spending much of his career in TV (he died in 1987 at the age of 49). The two leads are well cast as late 1960s' beautiful people, similarly
dressed, their physical resemblance being key to the plot. Martin Potter had just made Fellini's Satyricon, while Judy Geeson was the
go-to girl at the time for sexy young blondes. They're backed up by a heavyweight supporting cast and the result is nicely photographed by
the great Geoffrey Unsworth.
Odeon's DVD transfer is anamorphic in a ratio of 1.78:1, very close to the likely cinema ratio of 1.75:1. The soundtrack is the original mono,
though unfortunately no hard-of-hearing subtitles are available. Nathaniel Thompson moderates the commentary which features Judy Geeson and
producer Peter Snell. This was recorded in the USA, where Geeson and Snell both now reside, for the American DVD release. Both are appreciative
of this film, which had a middling critical reaction and commercial success but now has a cult following. The conversation does tend to digress,
with Snell twice mentioning his newest film The Wicker Tree (yet to be released as I write this). Also on the disc is 11 minutes of
on-set footage, with music in lieu of a soundtrack, and explanatory captions. The extras are completed by the trailer and a stills gallery,
plus trailers for Odeon's forthcoming DVD releases of Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly and Say Hello To Yesterday.
|
|
|
