The Mad Room *** (1969, Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters, Skip Ward, Carol Cole, Severn Darden, Beverly Garland) – Classic Movie Review 6032

Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters and Beverly Garland are a winning triple whammy in the 1969 horror movie The Mad Room.

Co-writer/ director Bernard Girard’s 1969 horror movie The Mad Room is an atmospheric and suspenseful, if unsubtle and overly violent remake of the 1941 chiller Ladies in Retirement.

Shelley Winters is on good over-the-top form as widowed Mrs Armstrong, a wealthy retired former actress who lives at an isolated house on Vancouver Island and Stella Stevens is excellent as her live-in companion/ housekeeper Ellen Hardy, whose thoughts turn to murder when she needs a home for her mentally handicapped brother and sister George and Mandy Hardy (Michael Burns, Barbara Sammeth), not telling Mrs Armstrong that have spent the last 12 years in a mental institution for murdering their parents.

Indeed, Stevens and Winters are so good that they are the making of the movie’s enjoyment. But director Girard deserves credit too, as he handles the script, actors and jolts effectively. Beverly Garland also enjoys herself extravagantly as the drunken wife of a masseur who provides sexual services for his rich female clients.

The screenplay by Bernard Girard and A Martin Zweiback [A Z Martin] is very loosely based on the play Ladies in Retirement by Reginald Denham and Edward Percy and the 1941 screenplay by Reginald Denham and Garrett Fort. It updates the story from Victorian England to 1960s Canada, and makes the siblings a brother and sister instead of two sisters, as well as much younger rather than older than the housekeeper, and adds 1960s-style gore.

Also in the cast are Skip Ward, Carol Cole, Severn Darden, Beverly Garland, Lloyd Haynes, Jennifer Bishop, Gloria Manon, Lou Kane and Emil Sirka.

The Mad Room is directed by Bernard Girard, runs 93 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by by Bernard Girard and A Martin Zweiback, is shot by Harry Stradling Jr, produced by Norman Mauer, scored by Dave Grusin, and designed by Sydney Z Litwack.

It is shot on Vancouver Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

It features two songs Todd Rundgren’s band The Nazz: ‘Open My Eyes’ and ‘Wildwood Blues’ from their debut album.

Stella Stevens and Skip Ward met and fell in love while making the film and became engaged after.

Garland was pregnant so she wore costumes designed to hide it.

Girard was displeased how his film was later altered, and then it was a box-office failure, damaging his career.

Stevens said she did not get along with Winters, who was drinking. Stevens said she would never work with her again, but did a year later in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) when Winters had stopped drinking and they got along.

Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on 1 October 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. She appeared with her son Andrew Stevens in four films: Las Vegas Lady (1975), Down the Drain (1990), The Terror Within II (1991) and Illicit Dreams (1994).

Beverly Garland (1926–2008).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6032

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com