Richard Burton plays a man who can make terrible things happen by willing it so in his mind. The opening scene shows him being battered nearly to death in his apartment; the rest of the movie he's lying in a coma. His brain activity is still very much alive. Will detective Lino Ventura and psychiatrist Lee Remick be able to stop him before he strikes again? That premise sounds like a potentially good thriller, but the vast majority of the movie is spent trying to convince the leads that Richard Burton really is responsible for the disasters he's claiming credit for. But, told through flashbacks, the audience believes him immediately, so most of the time it's boring waiting for the other people in the movie to catch on. It would have been more exciting if the audience doubted his powers as well.Still, Lee Remick is beautiful, and she's given lots of wide-eyed close-ups in this movie, so if you just want the eye candy, you can probably get through it.

First of all, there is Richard Burton. His presence alone, like his character's terrible power, carries the film even when Morlar is lying in a coma for the entire duration of the movie. Then there is the story. Slow pace? For 1978 this film is a fast paced horror thriller. Most of all, it all feels real, even if most supporting evidence in the film is just mambo jumbo. There are several things that make this film great, one of the movies that should stand at the foundation of any film maker or cinema watcher. One of them is the acting and, as a corollary, the way that acting was framed. Then there is the story, something that seems like a cheap thriller, but that has all the necessary details to make it great. None of the characters are special in any way, but they are not ordinary either. A police detective, a psychologist, a failed lawyer, husband and father that seems to be followed by disaster. Their dynamic throughout the movie forces you at the edge of your seat, making you think and feel what the characters are supposed to feel.I admit I saw this film as a child and, as such, my personality has been shaped by it. I am therefore biased and cannot see this film as anything but great. But I just watched it again now, in my middle age, and I still found it phenomenal. I also feel the pain of missing actors like Richard Burton and even Lino Ventura and Lee Remick. Nowadays, actors are so different, stories are so different, and everybody is afraid of showing true art on the big screen.

The premise seems promising enough for an enjoyable thriller. Man is capable of causing disasters purely by psychic means. Think Uri Geller, but instead of bending spoons he brings down airplanes. OK, where do we go with this? Well, the director never really solves that problem. We get to see how from a young age the man finished off anybody who got under his skin, even his nagging parents. ( BTW in a particularly clumsily directed scene. We even get to see the dummies drop down the cliff.) However, at first nobody believes in his evil powers. And that's really all the movie consists of. Most of the screen time is taken up by the authorities s-l-o-w-l-y becoming convinced that he really is evil. By which time it's too late to stop him. It's just not nearly enough to make for a scary movie, certainly not for viewers over-saturated by apocalyptic action scenes. There's no drive, no central dilemma to resolve, things just meander along to their violent climax, which comes off as a major anti-climax. As Hitchcock pointed out, you can show the bomb ticking away, but you musn't make it go off. Aside from that, Ventura and Burton, both brilliant actors, never go head to head, because Burton spends most of the movie bandaged up in a hospital bed. How's that for suspense? So many ingredients for a good thriller, but what's served up is a bland dish.

A thoroughly silly and over-the-top supernatural thriller, The Medusa Touch manages to be rather entertaining in spite of its own absurdity. Based on a Peter Van Greenaway novel, the story asks us to accept that telekinetic doom-bringer Richard Burton is responsible for an ever-increasing series of disasters. Even after having his brains bashed out by a mystery assailant, he still manages to bring about his destructive mayhem from a hospital bed. Rarely in the annals of cinema has something so wildly ludicrous been played with such earnestness. Alas, not even this cast of respectable character-actors can bring conviction to such far-fetched nonsense.Novelist John Morlar (Richard Burton) claims to have a gift for disaster. He believes he can bring about catastrophes simply by willing them to happen. One evening he is bludgeoned with an ornament in his London flat by a mystery assailant. The attack would kill any normal human, but miraculously Morlar is still alive afterwards and is rushed into intensive care. A French policeman working in London - Inspector Brunel (Lino Ventura) - ends up investigating the attack. He visits Morlar's psychiatrist, Dr. Zonfeld (Lee Remick), to fit together a profile of the victim. Zonfeld tells many stories about Morlar's disaster-prone past, and pretty soon Brunel fears he may be working against supernatural forces. More worrying still is a reference in Morlar's diary which hints at an impending disaster involving a major festival at Westminster Abbey. Brunel finds himself racing against time to prevent yet another Morlar-inspired catastrophe.With a cast of this quality, you'd expect The Medusa Touch to be all about the acting. But most of the support players have little more than single scene cameos, leaving Burton, Ventura and Remick with the only weighty roles. Remick works hard to be persuasive, but Ventura is frequently undermined by his awkwardly thick French accent and Burton is guilty of far too much histrionic over-acting. The story unfolds through a series of episodic flashbacks, and at first this continual stop-start structure tends to be a little irritating (it does improve once you get used to it). Overall, The Medusa Touch isn't too bad. It has an intriguing enough central premise which, although silly, at least keeps the viewer guessing. If you don't expect too much of it, The Medusa Touch comes across as a bit of enjoyable nonsense.