Demonstrating that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a convicted strangler studies the paranormal and finds a way to render himself invisible. Once he escapes, he sets out to find and eliminate five women who remind him of the mother he murdered. A police lieutenant sets out to safeguard them and bring the invisible killer to justice.
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Poor Frank Ashmore, son of a former Hollywood star who is in jail has decided to do a little transcendental meditation. In fact he freaks the fecal matter out of a the guy with the cell across from his with a disappearing act he's perfected. Who says you can't learn anything new in the joint?Of course he escapes and then goes on the hunt to strangle a lot of former Hollywood cheesecake like Elke Sommer, Sue Lyon, Stefanie Powers, while being hunted by intrepid cops Robert Foxworth and Mark Slade are on the hunt for a murderer who leaves absolutely no forensics.The Astral Factor is a great example of what we lost when we grew too old and sophisticated for those classic Universal horror films. This was a film with a story that cried for that kind of treatment. The obvious example here is The Invisible Man which Claude Rains put over in a such bravura style of classic theater trained acting that we don't see any more. If The Invisible Man were done the same way as The Astral Factor the audience would have been bored out of their skulls.As was I.
"Demonstrating that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a convicted strangler studies the paranormal and finds a way to render himself invisible. Once he escapes, he sets out to find and eliminate the five women who testified in his prosecution. A police lieutenant (Robert Foxworth) sets out to safeguard them, and bring the invisible killer to justice," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. Made and hidden away as "Invisible Strangler" in 1976, and dredged up for reproducing as "The Astral Factor" for 1984.The most interesting aspect of this mother-fixated thriller is that you get to see the stars make asses of themselves. Mr. Foxworth (as Chuck Barrett) shows his bare buttocks while answering the door to Mark Slade (as Holt). Then, you see a bare-naked rear view of sexy Stefanie Powers (as Candy). Mr. Slade's pants are tight enough in the rear to ascertain that he prefers briefs to boxers. "You bet your sweet ass," he tells Foxworth. And, Elke Sommer (as Christina Hartman) models her tightly-clothed behind, too.** The Astral Factor (1984) John Florea ~ Robert Foxworth, Elke Sommer, Stefanie Powers, Mark Slade
THE ASTRAL FACTOR is a pretty exciting, albeit silly, supernatural thriller about a cereal killer who, after having studied ESP and psychic sciences, escapes from prison to have his revenge by assassinating some hot matrons; slightly clumsy, gruesome like a genuine _giallo, THE ASTRAL FACTOR, an honest '70s C thriller, boasts a delightful feminine cast—Stefanie Powers, Leslie Parrish, Elke Sommer, Jennifer Burton (--an erotica starlet--).The movie's title is explained, by misleading—because this guy's case isn't one of 'out—of—body travel', but one of _dematerialization, or rather of mere invisibility.In the C flicks she made in the mid—'70s, things like GONE WITH THE WEST and THE ASTRAL FACTOR, uprising starlet Stefanie Powers had the good habit of providing us with a glimpse of her naked behind; by then, she was already 33—34 yrs. An article says that CRESCENDO is 'notable only for her brief nude scene, the only one in her career'; it seems we have a definition problem. Stefanie shows her ass in at least two other flicks—those mentioned. So, take heart, Powers fans, it's more to Stefanie than it looks like!
An incoherent mess, with only one or two vaguely interesting things to think about as it churns relentlessly on. It is such an incredibly boring movie that it gives you plenty of time to think about all the awful things in it. Many of them have been mentioned in the other reviews here but a couple of points I don't think have been raised are the weird, not quite Point of Veiw shots, and some horrendously wrong eye lines.The "Are-they-aren't-they?" POV shots come early on in the movie, when the invisible killer escapes from the Institute for the Criminally Insane, and later when he follows a girl out of the underground garage that was such a feature in every other Columbo movie. Each shot is the standard POV camera moving down the hallway, complete with heavy, close-to-the-mike breathing and heavy heartbeat on the soundtrack. Pretty standard fare. Except, instead of just cutting away at the end, in this movie the camera stops short of the doors at the end of each shot and the invisible killer carries on through them alone - without his POV! It's weird.Later, in a touching scene between our last potential victim (Sommer sitting on a bed seen in close up) and the detective trying to protect her (Foxworth standing up, seen in medium long shot over Sommer's shoulder), the eye lines are so bad that in the close up Sommer appears to be holding a conversation with the detective's belly button.Other lowlights include an electrocuted stuffed owl, Foxworth's naked backside, some terrible pointing of the brickwork of the house at the final scene (I was THAT bored), a masked scuba diver attacking people on a boat not taking his mask off in case the audience noticed it was a different actor, and endless shots through mobiles, chair-backs, candelabra and whatever else the DP could place in front of the camera to frame the action. William Cameron Menzies could do this because he was a genius. This film couldn't spell genius. Crap. But worse than that - boring crap.
