Jack's Wife

Following his hugely successful debut with Night of the Living Dead, Romero flopped with a romantic comedy (There's Always Vanilla) as well as this curious hybrid, before returning to successful formula with The Crazies. Although there's an occult tinge to its story of a woman who turns to witchcraft for relief from her troubles and ends up shooting her husband in the belief that he is the prowler of her nightmares, it's a strange, experimental film, with an unmistakable (but amateurish) aura of Bergman in its fragmented study of a woman caught up in frustrations very much of the '60s. The drug references and abstract devices date it badly, but it's intriguing to see Romero torn between genre and art. On the evidence of this film (at least in the 89 minute version generally available), he eventually made the right choice.