Séance on a Wet Afternoon
2 a.m. Wed., Jan. 28 (That’s after midnight tonight, folks. Set your DVRs.)
(TCM)
Myra Savage isn’t just your run-of-the-mill psychic. She’s got ambition; the woman just needs a little free media. So it is in Séance on a Wet Afternoon, a 1964 psychological thriller starring Kim Stanley as the aforementioned psychic and Richard Attenborough as her long-suffering, hen-pecked husband, Billy.
The pair kidnap the daughter of a wealthy London couple in a cockamamie scheme that would find Myra demonstrating her clairvoyant chops to police by helping them find the girl. But the best-laid plans of mystics named Myra, wouldn’t you know, oft go astray. Or something like that.
Stanley, an American actress whose most notable work had been on the stage, only snagged the role of Myra after a string of other would-be leads, including Deborah Kerr and Shelley Winters, fizzled out. Good for the gods of casting. Stanley, magnificently creepy as the increasingly unhinged woman, would earn an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (although she’d lost that year to Julie Andrews, who had more pleasant interaction with children in that year’s Mary Poppins). Attenborough, who also co-produced Séance, is every bit her equal. Bryan Forbes’ direction is sharp, unfussy and atmospheric.
It’s a perfect picture to DVR and watch on a wet afternoon (which forecasters say might just be this Saturday).
