One Minute Before Death (1972) User Reviews

I've seen worse...but not much

[adriangr · 3/10 · 21 October 2019]

This is a pretty shabby affair, although it was evidently produced with some energy and at least the camera work is good - and in focus.

The movie tells of a woman named Lisa who arrives at a country mansion with her mother and is haunted/terrorized by ghosts, strange people, and an eerie painting of a dead woman called Rebecca. After 20 minutes, the modern day story gets put on hold while a boring and gushy explanatory flashback plays out for nearly 45 minutes! One we come back to the main cast again, the story rattles to a sudden end, with at least some attempt at true horror involving a nasty corpse.

There is lots of unintentional humour throughout. The mansion is spotlessly clean and well decorated...clearly the movie was filmed in somebody's large private home. It's also mercilessly lit, so regardless of day or night, everything is showcased in a blaze of industrial arc lighting, even when the cast laughabley hold candles ( that do absolutely nothing). All the acting is poor, and the special effects are nothing more than double exposures and sudden cuts. Stock "terror music" is applied with a trowel over every sequence of drama. Despite all of this, the amazing thing is that the photographer who shot it actually knew how to handle a camera, and most scenes look well storyboarded and nicely framed. Shame the photography is scuppered by the ghastly lighting.

The actresses totter around in "period" dresses that look like party costumes bought from the nearest high street store, and sport enough hair for about 3 people on top of their heads. There are even 2 versions of the painting of Rebecca, that the director swaps between randomly for no apparent reason, and they are glaringly different enough to ruin the little verisimilitude that the movie actually has to start with.

Overall the effect is that of a well produced home movie, so approach accordingly.

Stick with it: the ending is a riot.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 2 June 2016]

Loosely based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Oval Portrait opens in classic Gothic horror mode with a horse-drawn carriage drawing up to a storm-lashed antebellum house, the passengers—Mrs. Buckingham (Doris Buckinham) and her daughter Lisa (Wanda Hendrix)—arriving for the reading of a will. As the women approach the front door, Lisa sees a ghostly apparition of a lady in white, which vanishes before she can show her mother, who understandably dismisses the vision as a product of her daughter's overactive imagination. Once inside the house, the women meet housekeeper Mrs. Warren (Gisele MacKenzie), who shows them to their room.

During the night, Lisa wakes to the sound of music and goes downstairs, where she sees a man—who we later learn is named Joseph (Barry Coe)—playing the piano and talking to a woman called Rebecca. The next day, Lisa puts on a dress that she finds in a wardrobe, the sight of which sends Joseph into a hysterical state. In a prolonged flashback, Mrs. Warren explains the tragic story behind Joseph's strange behaviour: he was once a Confederate soldier in love with Rebecca, the daughter of a Union major, but as the couple were about to be wed in a secret ceremony, Joseph was arrested and taken away. On returning from the war, Rebecca's father discovered the truth about his daughter, who was pregnant with Joseph's baby, and threw her out of the house. When the war was over, Joseph returned to the house to find Rebecca dead, the young woman having fallen victim to a fatal illness.

Thus far, The Oval Portrait has been a pretty unremarkable Gothic tragedy with a narrative hampered by weak direction and sloppy editing (including gimmicky 'flickering' scene transitions that really grate). From here-on in, however, things get much more interesting…

The flashback ends with a distraught Joseph digging up the corpse of his dead bride-to-be, after which the action switches to the present, with the reading of the will. Rebecca's spirit then possesses Lisa, and furniture and ornaments start to fly around the house. Lisa runs upstairs where she discovers Rebecca's corpse hidden in a wardrobe. And the craziness doesn't end there: the next evening, after most of the visitors have left, Joseph sneaks back into the house for one last dance with Rebecca. While he's waltzing round the room with his putrid partner, Mrs. Warren gets out of bed, investigates, and sees Joseph kissing the crumbly cadaver (which makes one wonder what else he's been doing with it). Clearly well off his rocker, the man approaches the housekeeper, who pulls a gun and fills him full of lead, finally allowing him to be united with Rebecca in death.

Director Rogelio A. González's handling of matters is just as shambolic as before, but the madness is far more entertaining—after all, there's nothing like a spot of necrophilia to pep up an otherwise mediocre movie.

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

Slow-moving Mexican ghost story

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 10 February 2019]

THE OVAL PORTRAIT is a little-seen low budget Mexican gothic inspired by one of Edgar Allan Poe's many short stories. It's the usual kind of misadventure set in a rambling old house, where a young woman finds herself possessed by the spirit of a dead woman. Hints of necrophilia and the like darken the plotting somewhere, but mostly this is a slow-moving and mildly atmospheric ghost story with a few shrieking histrionics added to the mix. The cast give undistinguished performances but there's a certain atmosphere of regret here along with darker moments at the climax.

hack work, but good for a Sunday afternoon

[thomandybish · 12 November 2003]

What can be said about this forgotten flick, which gratuitously uses Edgar Allen Poe's name (on the British and home video release)in an attempt to punch up it's marquee value, employs an actress who is 50 if she's a day as the leading ingenue, and is lensed by Mexican filmmakers in what looks like the American Northwest? Quite a bit.

The movie concerns a mother and daughter who have come for the reading of a will to the mother's brother's house. Soon the daughter becomes possessed by the spirit of her dead cousin and all sorts of weirdness happens. We learn from the faithful housekeeper that her former employer was a Union Commander and left his daughter alone to go off to war. Unbeknownst to him, their was a renegade Confederate soldier hiding in his house, and his daughter had fallen in love with him. The soldier is recaptured (as he and the girl almost exchange wedding vows), the now-pregnant daughter is thrown out by her father when he learns of this, she loses the baby and her mind, the father goes crazy and dies, and the daughter dies. Whew! and that's the backstory! Certainly no plot deficiencies here!

In it's better moments, ONE MINUTE BEFORE DEATH(or ONE MINUTE BEFORE MIDNIGHT or THE OVAL PORTRAIT, take your pick)plays like a lesser entry in the Hammer Studios catalog. In it's worse moments, the movie comes on like a particularly overripe episode of DARK SHADOWS. The premise, concerning a deceased woman who possesses the body of a cousin, is rather weak and the film slips into weirdness near the end. The movie resorts to flying objects and mummified corpses to carry the last 30 or so minutes. The post-Civil War setting details are shakey; some of the dresses and hats the actresses wear look to be from a vintage some 20-40 years after the time of the setting. Still, there is some pretty scenery and some luxurious antebellum sets. Not high art, or even frightening, but clean and okay for passing an interminable Sunday afternoon.

Acting???

[tinahale-25109 · 1/10 · 30 January 2019]

The plot is AWESOME with that Gothic Haunted House vibe if the 70's that made that era of movies so good. The acting however was atrocious. How many people noticed that the portrait changed a few times from one woman to another? What could have been such a good movie of the 1970's turned out to be just another one of those leaving you saying WHY??

Poe is murdered

[nogodnomasters · 1/10 · 26 May 2019]

It seems some of Poe's classics should not be made into film. In this tale a family gets together for the reading of a will at a house that appears to be haunted by the ghost of Rebecca, whose oval portrait appears on the wall. The haunting effects are poor, as in turning a camera on/off poor, something that dates from the 1920's. We do find out about Rebecca which consumes much of the film.

Utter Apathy.........

[edgein15 · 5/10 · 13 February 2002]

How many horror movies have you seen where you whined about the poor, dark, murky cinematography?

Well here, every scene is brightly lit for you to see in all it's horrific glory.

That's what sucks. There's so much subtext, but the photography killed all nuance.

Not that this thing would have been a gem otherwise, but how many movies can you name that are ruined by its photography? Yep, this is the only one that I can think of.

Ever.

Shades of Dorian Gray!

[classicsoncall · 4/10 · 10 April 2020]

I saw this film under the title "The Oval Portrait". I know I wasn't seeing things after reading a couple other reviewers who noticed that the picture in the oval frame changed every so often, enough I would say that it could have been two different women whose picture was being presented. No matter, this story enters macabre territory when in a long flashback scene, a Confederate Civil War soldier digs up the coffin of his deceased wife and proceeds to make her corpse the center of his universe, quite literally. The spirit of that dead woman inhabits the portrait, and in turn takes over the body of a woman who has arrived at the family estate for the reading of a will. What caused me more than once to question the story's chronology is the fact that the more recent event of the will gathering seemed to be only a short time following the Civil War, during which time the husband Joseph (Barry Coe) was arrested at his wedding ceremony, and upon returning, found his wife already dead. Dancing amorously with the dessicated corpse would have been bad enough, but in a necrophilia induced nightmare, the man virtually proceeds to make love to the corpse while it crumbles in his grasp. Too weird for words really, because if one's grip on reality is that severely compromised, it's time for the loony bin. Which is where Joseph might have wound up if the housekeeper (Gisele MacKenzie) hadn't put him out of his misery, while ironically setting up a reunion with wife Rebecca (Maray Ayres) on the other side.

Absolutely the worst film I have ever seen in my life!

[overseer-3 · 1/10 · 2 February 2024]

I watched this terrible film One Minute Before Death aka The Oval Portrait on Amazon Prime and their print was awful, but even if I had seen a pristine print I still would have hated this "film". It was a hackneyed, painful, laughably bad interpretation of a Poe story, about a woman named Lisa possessed by the demonic dead spirit of a young woman named Rebecca who is displayed in a portrait in a gloomy house, a woman who lived during the Civil War and fell in love with an enemy soldier. That young woman became pregnant out of wedlock and her insane daddy attacked her because his wife had also deserted him with a lover. Insane daddy is committed to an asylum and when he dies the haunted house is about to be willed over to Lisa and her relative. Will Lisa inherit this "home"? Or will she be better off living elsewhere? Convoluted plot, to say the least! The way this film was edited was abysmal; not sure if better editing would have helped it, though, because the story was so distasteful. We are not even given a precise indication as to how Rebecca died. In childbirth, we assume, but it isn't made clear. Enter this turkey at your own mental risk!

A Hidden "Gem"

[Rainey-Dawn · 7/10 · 19 January 2016]

The Oval Portrait is based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's story is one of his shortest only two pages long. So to create a film that is around 1 1/2 hours long must have been a difficult task but it was done with this film - and beautifully I must add.

This is a film that has escaped me for years. I acquired a copy of this one from the Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack and I am pleased this film was added to the collection.

Overall this is a good film - especially if you are interested in movies that are based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I was not disappointed with this film adaptation.

7/10

Drowsily watchable romantic ghost story.

[EyeAskance · 9 November 2010]

While staying in an old house to hear the reading of a will, a woman becomes haunted by the spirit of the deceased girl whose room she is occupying. The kindly housekeeper advises her to leave the house quickly, and supports this warning with what is possibly the longest expository flashback sequence in film history.

This fly-ball ghost story is mostly a woebegone romance set during and shortly after the U. S. Civil War. Stir in some soap-suds melodrama and a fat pinch of horse-and-buggy chills of the "old dark house" variety, and there you have The Colonel's secret recipe for one peculiar little movie. It's a noticeably insouciant project filmed almost entirely within a neo-Victorian styled house, and features some laughably unconvincing period wardrobe and wigs. That said, it's a modestly watchable item which transcends slightly the usual expectations held for underprivileged cinema. The has-been female leads(Hendrix and Mackenzie) are commendable, if a bit outmoded in their old-school Hollywood histrionics, but come-off nearly Oscar-worthy in comparison to their less-distinguished support players. Truth is, there's actually little to gripe about where the rudiments of production are concerned...it's adequately overseen for the most part. It does suffer from directorial lassitude and yo-yo pacing, however, and the dearth of gratuitous sensationalism renders it a rather prudent entry to the delectus of horror cinema.

4.5/10...not exactly "bucket list" material.

Uneven Gothic malarkey

[Bezenby · 6/10 · 4 January 2013]

Short overview first: This is a film that starts off strong and creepy, bogs down in the middle for a long time, then picks up a bit at the end. If you've read elsewhere that the pacing in this film is a little off, then you've read right. That said, it is in no way a bad film and worth a watch at least, especially if you're into those Gothic style Haunted House films that were all the rage back then.

An old Major has died, and his family are turning up at his house for the will reading (I think). His niece immediately gets the creeps and starts seeing the spectre of a young girl around the place, and is also creeped out by the Oval Portrait of a lady on the wall. The niece starts wearing some old clothes she found in a cupboard which freaks out some guy called Joseph, and the housekeeper then goes into the backstory, which takes up the entire middle portion of the film! But not before the niece is possessed by the spirit inhabiting the portrait on the wall…

The backstory concerns the girl in the portrait, the guy called Joseph, and the major, and is more of a civil war era costume drama/romance than a horror film. That said, even my wife, who has no patience for these sorts of b-movies and would rather have some semblance of a real life, did enjoy the film for what it was.

A southern Dark Shadows on a slightly higher budget.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 4 October 2019]

This gothic horror film deals with the saga of southern belle Maray Ayres, before and after her death. She starts off as a ghost, and through flashbacks, the audience learns about the mysterious Rebecca, no relation to Daphne DuMaurier's unseen antagonist, but certainly as powerful a spirit. The actual film follows the arrival of Rebecca's cousin (Wanda Hendrix), and Rebecca's alleged attempt to take over Hendrix's soul. Barry Coe plays a recovering soldier who falls under Rebecca's spell, giving her a motive for wanting to find a body to inhabit. Like Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, there's a loyal housekeeper, in this case the not as severe Giselle McKenzie, more of a mother figure (and quite lovely) than a forbidding presence.

Certainly, Rebecca is not presented as an evil woman, but encourigable and independent like her late mother whom her father calls a tramp during a confrontation. Like other gothic mysteries and horror films, this features a portrait of a major character, seen of course over the opening credits. The lengthy flashbacks minimizes the screen time of veteran actress Hendrix (supposed to be much younger), but the flashbacks are more interesting.

The actor playing the nasty father is certainly unforgettable, but unidentifiable because of the credits. Ayres is quite alluring as the ghostly Rebecca, and Coe ("Peyton Place") is quite verile. This is a type of film that was popular in the 1940's and 50's but send camp and melodramatic in most of the other variations, particularly because of over the top acting and dizzying photography. all of the elements come perfectly together here, making you very interested in how everything plays out. Elements of the 1970's story and detail techniques really work at making this truly fresh and alive.

"Her Eyes! You Can Feel Them Watching!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 30 August 2021]

ONE MINUTE BEFORE DEATH is a non-threatening, sub-soap opera-quality "horror" movie, loosely based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.

A family is haunted by the ghost of Rebecca, who died under suspicious circumstances. Her portrait hangs over the fireplace and her spirit roams the house.

Unfortunately, this movie suffers from horrid acting and dialogue, among other things. On top of all that it's boring as hell! Otherwise, it could have been a riotous schlock masterwork! Instead, watching it is like wading through treacle...