Passings #3: Sally Kellerman, and Passings #4: Mitchell Ryan, A Reflection of Fear (1972, William Fraker, USA) by Kymm Zuckert

“Don’t ever let a man touch you, their touch is death.”

When Sally Kellerman died a couple of weeks ago, I chose Last of the Red Hot Lovers as the movie to watch for her, a Neil Simon play that I was very familiar with, but had never seen the movie, and put it on my list. Then, last week, Mitchell Ryan died, and when I was looking for something for him, I found that both he and Sally Kellerman had worked together in A Reflection of Fear, and decided to pay tribute to two birds with one stone, so to speak. 

I am going to assume that everyone knows who Sally Kellerman was, the original Hotlips Houlihan from the movie of M*A*S*H, and she is wonderful in one of my favourite films, A Little Romance. Mitchell Ryan, as I said in my review of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers in October, is probably best remembered as the General in Lethal Weapon, but for me he will always be the mysterious Burke Devlin in Dark Shadows.  

In A Reflection of Fear, Sally Kellerman is second-billed after Robert Shaw above the title, and Mitchell Ryan is first billed of the co-stars, so I hope it will be a good showcase for both of them. 

Creepy Marguerite, (Sondra Locke, pre-Clint Eastwood, also 28 years old in real life, but looking barely 16 here), looks at specimens through her microscope while arguing with a mysterious, shadowy person who could be a doll and could be a person and could be entirely in her mind, lives with her mother Katherine (Mary Ure) and grandmother Julia (Signe Hasso) while idolizing her practically unknown father (Robert Shaw). 

Michael, the father, comes with his girlfriend Anne (our Sally), to ask Katherine for a divorce, as they seem to have been separated for some years. He is quite perturbed at how Marguerite has no friends and doesn’t go to school and seems to be a complete prisoner. Katherine agrees to a divorce if he never sees Marguerite again. 

“Where exactly is this movie going, Papa?”

Father and daughter are weirdly flirty with each other, murmuring how they have wished to be alone together in her room, and I’m like, is this going to turn into an incest story, or is it just the 1970s? And then she gives him a big smoochy smooch and we know which way the wind is blowing. 

Then A Thing Occurs, and the Inspector arrives, who is our Mitchell, come to solve the case and find out who did the Thing. He has a few nice scenes, does a very strong job, and looks very handsome with that moustache. 

Poor Sally Kellerman doesn’t have a very good role in this, at first gentle and kind, then sort of droopy and sad about being the Other Woman both when it comes to Katherine and to Marguerite, and with not a lot interesting to do. This was only a couple of years after her Academy Award nomination for M*A*S*H, was there really nothing better on offer?

The director, William A. Fraker, was mostly a cinematographer, only directing three films and some television, which explains the interesting look of the film. We often see interior scenes from a long way off, as though we are spying on them, and it is very hard to tell at times who is doing what, like when Marguerite’s garden is destroyed, was that Marguerite herself, or Aaron (who might be a doll)? Everything is very swirly and swimmy and unreal, as it is in Marguerite’s brilliant and possibly crazy brain. 

It’s not a terribly good movie, and interestingly has the exact same ending as another not very good movie I saw recently that I will not name because spoilers, but everyone does a good job, acting their darndest with a script made out of cobwebs and dust, and since all you can control as an actor is your own performance, that’s what they did, as the script floated off into cloud cuckooland. 

Rest well, Sally Kellerman and Mitchell Ryan. You will be missed. 

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog