Backfire

Vietnam rears its head again in this who's-haunting-who thriller about a wealthy shell-shocked veteran, Donny (Fahey), whom his wife Mara (Allen) hopes, with the help of her rekindled old flame (Martin) and some gruesome special effects, to drive to suicide. The plot backfires, and she's left with a catatonic husband whose fortune she forfeits to his devoted sister (Manoff) if she puts him in an institution. Suddenly it's Mara's turn to worry about things going bump in the night. Is she cracking up, is Donny faking his catatonia, is the sister trying to get her hands on the dough, or are the weird happenings linked to the arrival of an enigmatic stranger (Carradine)? Lacking the narrative assurance to exploit its switchback plottings, this would-be Hitchcockian mystery ends up floundering in the shallows. Only Carradine's nicely judged performance escapes the formulaic straitjacket.