Film

Ruby (1977)

Director: Curtis Harrington

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This starts rather well: it's 1951, and a drive-in projectionist is attacked and strangled by the film he is projecting. Unfortunately it's the high-point of the film, for as the unseen force which animated the celluloid is revealed to be the spirit of Piper Laurie's murdered lover, Harrington strolls the gamut of contemporary horror influences in search of the completely predictable. He finds it: Ruby's daughter (Baldwin) is possessed and thrashes on a levitating bed. The cluttered art direction and the nostalgic flashbacks to the gangster '30s are stillborn mementoes of Harrington's own What's the Matter with Helen?, and the drive-in location never has its possibilities fully developed. Given that the film is always watchable, if never exciting, the drive-in isn't so much a location as the film's probable market.

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