'Screaming woman' Here's a real ID challenge...

[Archivist]

I saw this movie on television in the very early 80's, maybe even the very late 70's.  It was probably American.  It had the look of a 70's movie, I think.

I only saw one scene, but that scene was enough to stick in my mind for a very long time.

A woman was sitting in a bedroom in front of a dressing table.  She was cleaning off her makeup, and looking more and more mystified at the face that was being revealed under it.

The more makeup she took off, the more she looked at herself as if she didn't know she looked like that under there.

Then a man comes in (maybe he was watching at the time?) and slips his hands under her scalp, and pulls off what turns out to be a wig, revealing dark, mousy hair underneath.

She looks in horror at what she sees, and starts screaming and screaming.

I was very young at the time and was watching it with my great-grandmother at the time, and when the screaming started my grandmother started yammering at my great-grandmother, asking her why she let me watch something like this.  And *I* got sent to my room!  WTF???

Anyway...

Does ANYONE have any idea what this one is?


~Archivist~

[akiratubo]

I've never seen such a movie, but I sure want to know what it is.  That sounds like the stuff that could give you nightmares, lol.

Did you mean "mousy" as in, literally, like a mouse?  Like she wasn't human underneath that makeup?

[Archivist]

Naw, mousy as in 'plain'.  IIRC, the woman was glamourous when made up, but when the makeup and wig was removed she looked plain.

The scene was incredibly strange and I'd love to know what the heck it was.  My guess is that she somehow didn't know that she looked the way she did, or that she thought she was 'someone else'.  Very weird and creepy.

It would be cool if she wasn't human under the makeup, but it is even creepier in some ways if she didn't know that she was 'someone else'.  It's more realistic and the thought is that 'it could happen in real life'.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

~Archivist~

[Yaddo 42]

This sounds vaguely like the 1986 TV movie "Who Is Julia?" starring Mare Winningham. It was about a very beautiful blonde woman who is in a serious accident, the doctors transfer her brain into the body of a mousy looking woman (Winningham) who has also had something awful happen to her and winds up brain dead (I think, it has been a while). There are several scenes of the woman in her new body looking in the mirror and still seeing her old self. There was also a scene of her seeing herself in her "new" body with the head still shaved and covered in scars from the operation. Despite the scifi movie style premise it is more of a psychological drama than a genre movie.

This might not be the film you mean, but it sounds in the ballpark. Besides I'd like to see a full blown horror or scifi movie that played with the ideas in your posts.

[Steve Byczek]

Was it in "Black and White" or color?

Based on your description...it sounds to me like "Circus of Horrors" or "The Hypnotic Eye". Both films both came out in 1960.  Try putting both of these titles in the "Internet Movie Database" search-engine (on the site's homepage). You will get more trivia and production information.



Sincerely,Steve.

[Archivist]

Yaddo, that sounds like it, but 1986 seems too recent.  Mind you, where the heck did you dig that up from?  It sounds like a neat movie.

Steve, I'll still have a go at IMDB.

I may have got some of the details wrong - after all, it was a long time ago and I was pretty young at the time.  And if we see a horror or scifi movie with these ideas turn up, we'll know where they came from!

Thanks for the input, folks!  You guys rock!

~Archivist~

[Susan]

Damn, you make one home movie and the next thing you know it's on video!



Post Edited (06-01-05 22:03)

[Menard]

Just one home movie? That ain't what I heard. (:

[Yaddo 42]

When I used to get home from college classes in the afternoon (in the mid 90s) and would flip through the channels, it used to turn up on Lifetime a bunch. The hot blonde standing in front of a mirror in a nightgown would grab my attention, so I watched it one day. I had a vague memory of it, I don't remember the ending, and that Mare Winningham was the "other" woman, but I still had to go to IMDB to find the title.