THE NESTING
U.S.A. | 1981
Directed by Armand Weston
Starring
Robin Groves
John Carradine
Gloria Grahame
 Color | 103 Minutes | R
Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC)
Blue Underground
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Also available on Blu-ray
 
 
Review by
Doug Red

Film:7
: DVD:9
There is a point in most horror films where the average audience will think "why don't the victims of the monster/aliens/mad scientists just leave?" For example, what is stopping the family in The Amityville Horror from leaving once they see red-eyed Jody the Pig Angel staring through the window? What makes Laurie Strode think it's safer to hide in her house rather than running down the middle of the road screaming the neighborhood awake on that fateful Halloween night? The Nesting takes this classic loophole in horror storytelling head on, not by forcing the main characters into a scary situation and locking the door, but by giving them an extreme fear of leaving the house that, when coupled with being in a haunted house in the first place, makes the character desperate to escape but unable to open the door!
    The Nesting begins with perky but neurotic Laurie Cochran (Robin Groves), a successful novelist who seemingly has it all. Her novel (also titled The Nesting) has been published and she has a great guy as her romantic partner, Mark the easygoing way-mellow dude (Christopher Loomis). This happy life is a sham though, because Laurie often has panic attacks and agoraphobia that keep her from even being able to leave her apartment. Poor Mark also know that she has an issue with men touching her as well, leaving her unable to experience intimacy and rendering her as frigid as Tippi Hedren in Marnie. After consulting her psychiatrist Dr. Webb (Patrick Farrelly), she decides that the best possible thing for her is a change of scenery. So off Laurie goes (in a period where, due to therapy, she isn't experiencing the extremes of her phobias) to a house in the country to see if she can overcome her fears for good in a less hectic location than the big city. A funny thing happens to her on the way to her prospective rental property, though. A hole in the road and the desire to stretch her legs leads her to a beautiful old house in the woods, a little run down but rentable. The odd thing though is that the building is exactly like the house she thought she imagined for her novel, even though she's never been to the area nor seen a photo of the house. Before you can say "coincidence", she has the old house rented and is hard at work writing, restoring the house a little, and seemingly overcoming some of her phobias.
    Trouble in paradise nests in Lauren's world fairly quickly. Weird erotic dreams begin to haunt Lauren as she uncovers more about the history of the house, involving painted ladies and strangers fondling her. A strange dream woman (Hollywood legend Gloria Grahame) who was in some of her dreams in the big city, continues to show up in Laurie's dreams in the house. The man she rented the house from, Col. LeBrun (horror icon John Carradine), has a stroke and can't communicate — happening the moment he first sees Laurie's face. The shifty local handyman seems to be probing Laurie's writings when he's supposed to be doing work. And sometimes Laurie even feels like there are other people in the house with her. Eventually she comes face to face with the mysterious forces and dark history of the house, as well as her own phobias, in a fiery climax that actually makes sense of the title.
    The Nesting has suffered from a bad reputation for years. The first time I heard about it was in reference to it being Gloria Grahame's final film and, as such, a waste of a fine classic Hollywood actress's talents. However, the film turned out to be a good spooky thriller that kept my interest throughout. It is low budget filmmaking that doesn't always hit it's desired effects perfectly (one character is hoisted into the air by supernatural forces, but it's shot in a particularly unconvincing way that accentuates his hoisting by ropes off-camera, as is a sequence involving Laurie trapped on the roof that just doesn't make much sense). Just as often though the film does have a great approach to the material (some of the weird framing of action in the final sequence of Laurie attempting to flee the house but being stymied by closing doors, burning walls, and attacking cars(!), or even some of the dreamy slow-motion glam shots that are used to tell the story of what happened to the house in the past to create the haunting, stylistically recalling the classic slo-mo violence in Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, adding to the very '70s feel).
    Director Armand Weston, who had worked on the edges of the 1970s porn chic world with titles like Expose Me, Lovely and The Taking of Christina, builds his film out of mixing the '70s horror style in terms of pace and performance with '70s exploitation style of shooting in terms of camera and lighting, even including a few touches that recall classics like Behind the Green Door (in particular a scene involving a triptych mirror where Laruen admires her nude form only to have arms come out of nowhere to start caressing her, could be a Green Door outtake). Leading lady Robin Groves has a likable spunk about her performance that lets the audience root for her even when she makes somewhat daffy choices, and in spite of its reputation Gloria Grahame did a fine job in her small but pivotal role.
    It's easy to see why this film hasn't been appraised higher in horror fan circles: it was a very '70s style moody horror film that had the temerity to came out in 1981. '80s audiences were already experiencing the height of the slasher boom, and a film that was largely about a haunting, even one livened up by a few gory set-pieces involving impalings, gunshots, and knives to the head, was bound to seem old fashioned at the time. It's too bad, because the strange octagonal house in The Nesting that is beckoning to you on the fill is well worth checking into.
The Blue Underground DVD release of The Nesting is a quality job. The 1.85:1 print is flawless and showcases the '70s style cinematography. Three separate audio options are offered: Dolby Digital 6.1 DTS-ES, 5.1 Surround EX and Digital Mono, all sounding topnotch.
    Extras include deleted and extended scenes, for which only one is a true deleted scene (where cops show up and talk to Lauren about midway through the film). Most of the scenes are longer takes of existing scenes that show a little bit more detail into the story or characters (for instance, more time is given to the theories of Michael David Lally's physicist character about the outer edges of physics and the world of the supernatural). Other extras include the English language trailer, the Spanish language trailer (where it was called Mas Alla del Terror) which is basically the English trailer dubbed, and three TV spots that show different approaches used to get audiences interested in the film. There is an extensive poster/stills gallery that has plenty of interesting sights and information (such as the act that the title of the film was Phobia when the pressbooks were made, or detailed shots of some of the gore effects). 8/28/11
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