The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

A psychical sex thriller totally lacking in thrills, sex or psychic phenomena, this takes its proud place in that tiny elite of features with scenarios so atrocious that their entire action has to unfold before the title premise can even be established: in other words, that the reincarnation of Peter Proud is indeed Peter Proud's reincarnation. Sarrazin moves prosaically through the proceedings as the man whose recurring nightmare turns out to be a memory of his former life, but the plot is so minimal that the proceedings constantly have to be padded out with hideous travelogue footage and emoting-by-numbers from a shifting and evidently uncertain cast. At one point, in what is supposed (God help us) to be a climactic suspense sequence involving cross-cutting, Thompson interpolates lengthy footage of Sarrazin and girlfriend doing a lolloping square dance to a vocal which endlessly intones 'Better is to come'. This is by far the film's most fantastic assertion.