Welcome to November, Enemaniacs!

As I continue to crank through a backlog of movies that I have built over the course of about 13 or 14 years through buying multi-packs of cheap-o movies on DVD, this was a title I’ve been vaguely aware of for more than 30 years, mostly because of the two lead stars in this movie. This week, we’ll be diving deep into 1985’s Mesmerized starring Jodie Foster and John Lithgow. Mesmerized was a co-production between RKO in the United States as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The UK would get the original release in November 1985, and then the US got it about 13 months later.

Obviously, the lead actors stand out the most when you’d be perusing the drama section at your video store, but it’s a period piece and it’s hard to say if it really would have stuck out to too many people in the mid-80s. After all, Jodie Foster’s star was brightest in the late 70s and the 90s. Most of her roles in the 80s went largely unnoticed until her Oscar win for The Accused. John Lithgow had lots and lot and lots of roles in the 80s, as well as a pair of Oscar nominations of his own for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. Still, he was largely more in line with what you’d consider a character actor for most of his career up to that point. So it’s possible this movie was not really carrying the star power at that time as you might think it could a decade later.

Directing this film is Michael Laughlin. Laughlin also wrote the script based on a story from Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski. Laughlin was an unfortunate victim of COVID-19 in 2021 at the age of 82, but while he didn’t necessarily have a massive career in film, he’s probably best known for the pair of films he made with Bill Condon when the Oscar-winning writer’s career was just getting started. Those films were 1981’s Strange Behavior and 1983’s Strange Invaders. The latter is one I am intimately familiar with having seen it a few times when I was a kid (and it scared the bejeezus out of me) and then I revisited it a short while back for Monster Mondays over at Film Seizure.

This film’s plot is loosely based on the 1886 death of Thomas Edwin Bartlett which is colloquially known as the Pimlico Mystery. In the Pimlico district of London, young Adelaide Bartlett is married to the wealthy grocer Thomas. He’s ten years her senior. The situation grows more interesting when a Wesleyan minister, George Dyson, is brought into the mix. He was allegedly encouraged by Thomas to seduce and romance Adelaide. Thomas was suffering from several ailments. Thomas and Adelaide did marry, though it was supposed to be platonic. She did have a stillborn baby with him, but I’m guessing a lot of their arrangement was due to the era and likely a scenario where Adelaide would need to have some security because she would not have been allowed to own property or something similar to that. Over time, she began to poison Thomas by way of chloroform. After he died, Adelaide and George were arrested, but the jury could not convict her. Supposedly, public opinion had swayed to Adelaide’s favor and reports said that when the not guilty verdict was read by the jury foreman, the gathered onlookers cheered loudly.

So, let’s dig into this dramatized version of this movie and figure out if we’ll be cheering loudly ourselves.

Our movie begins in New Zealand in 1880. So, we’re already very much off the track of the reality of the story. Think of it like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was kind of an overly stylized take on Ed Gein but not in Wisconsin… in Texas… like the title says. Meh… Anyway, it would seem this will mostly be told in flashback as Jodie Foster’s Victoria Thompson is already on trial and the courthouse is full and their attention is rapt.

Aaaaand sure enough. She narrates how her story began and how she came to be where she is in this courthouse. A baby is delivered to an orphanage by a man who basically took the little girl from his daughter after the father was out of the picture and this guy refused to allow her to keep the baby. He’s so ready to be rid of the child that he says the child didn’t even have a name as he storms out of the woman’s office. We dash forward eighteen hears and that baby has now been given the name of Victoria. She watches the others moving about in the courtyard with a grat deal of melancholy. That is, until one day, when a girl finds her and tells her that someone is there to see her. She excitedly goes to the office where she sees a man. Believing him to possibly be relation to her, he introduces himself to her as Oliver Thompson.

Oliver is a businessman. He has a small chain of shops that is not yet a huge success but he expects the chain to someday turn a profit. Apparently, Oliver uses the orphanage as a marketplace for a possible wife. He nervously asks if she has ever considered marriage. Jump cut to Victoria and Oliver getting married. It’s an awkward ceremony. The two of them have no family… well, no duh she doesn’t have any family, but neither does Oliver. The only other person here is the priest marrying them.

She laments that while, yes, this was all arranged by the orphanage, being married does not mean she was free. She had other duties and expectations now laid upon her. One of those things is, as Oliver puts it, “the way things are done.” Shortly after being married, like RIGHT AFTER they got married, he puts her onto a carriage, tells her she must now return to school until she has fully come of age (I thought she was already 18, but what do I know?), and yeah, she’s sent BACK to the fuckin’ orphanage.

The day does come when she’s done with the orphanage and she’s put onto a ship to the North Island to be reunited with Oliver. However, when she arrives, she’s let in by the butler and is told by the butler and the maid that Oliver is not there. He went to the town of Woodford to visit his ailing father. So she was sent back to the orphanage after marrying this guy she met at the orphanage and apparently was “told about her” as if she was in some sort of catalog for him to pick a wife from, then she’s gotta travel to the other island in New Zealand by boat, and now after a long ass day, she learns the motherfucker isn’t even home?

I’d kill this goofball too.

You might notice in the image above that the house is illuminated by candles. While not totally unheard of in the 19th century, the butler makes the point that Oliver likes to save a penny. So, he picks up a girl from an orphanage to marry. He marries her but sends her back to the orphanage to “come of age” before she can just, you know, go home with him. She has to go to the other island where he’s not at home to receive her. AND he’s a cheap ass? Babe, you would have been better off being single.

Even in 1880.

But here’s where things get REALLY unsavory and weird. Oliver appears to actually be there in the house. After awkwardly just kind of sitting around, awkwardly having dinner, and uncomfortably falling asleep with her head down on the dining room table, the maid suggests she get into bed after such a long and tiring day. As she undresses, Oliver watches through holes in the wall like he lives in the locker room in the movie Porky’s. He also sniffs her handkerchief.

Just a… Just a regular ol’ guy here doing normal, not-at-all-creepy things. Seriously, he’s kind of got old J.D. Vance vibes.

He makes his presence known to Victoria by creeping into the bedroom and creepily advancing on the bed while she sleeps. Suddenly realizing someone is in the room watching her sleep, she gets startled and reflexively throws hands slapping Oliver in the face. He doesn’t look pleased by this one bit, but apparently it went over okay.

Later, Oliver takes Victoria to one of his shops. He’s excited to show her what he’s built. She’s so-so on the idea. However, there, she’s introduced to Oliver’s younger brother, George. George is a strappin’ young fella. He’s also quite a bit better looking to Victoria than Oliver. He’s also younger and closer to her age. There’s a brief meet cute as the people at the store chase a rat that’s tearing through the goods and everyone gets covered in flour. George and Victoria share a smile and a look.

Later, George surprises Victoria by showing up at Oliver’s place while she is playing piano. Apparently, Oliver isn’t going to be home for a bit. George shows Victoria the dogs that George keeps for… some reason. He’s never home and he always keeps them gated in the backyard. You know… I’m beginning to think Oliver is a bit of a weirdo.

Oliver is not all that he seems. When he first met Victoria, he was kind of bashful and a goof. When they married he seemed sweet and gentle. Now that she’s in his home, he is moody. He was kind to her when he was going to show her one of his stores. After about a month, he’s frustrated with her properness. He doesn’t like that she won’t dress or change clothes in front of him. Apparently, they have not had relations either. When he talks to her about these things and she dodges the uncomfortable conversation, he snaps at her that she will grow ears (to listen when he speaks to her).

He seemingly gets this from his father. When Oliver, Victoria, and George get a visit from Old Man Thompson, he’s stern and curt. Victoria is carrying a puppy and he demands it be taken outside, which causes Oliver to shout and back up the command with his own stern response. When they are at the table, Old Man Thompson scolds Victoria for pouring tea for herself before pouring some for him. When the door needs closing, Oliver, in front of his father, demands that she be the one to get up and close it. It’s very clear Oliver wants a servant, not so much a wife that he respects.

Naturally, George is warm and not at all like his brother or father. Right away, he comforts his sister-in-law when she excuses herself. He takes her to a closet in the home George says he used to hide from them. It’s the closet that is next to the bedroom where Oliver watches Victoria change her clothes. She is clearly not a fan of this and George is supportive of her.

Things get a little worse that night. Oliver is drunk. Old Man Thompson doesn’t bother to remember his daughter-in-law’s name. When the maid tells Oliver that Victoria is not in the house, Oliver tries to find her. She’s not in the kennel with the dogs. She’s in none of the rooms of the house. Oliver tells his father that he was too rough on her and she ran off. It turns out that Victoria has gone to the docks. She’s pawned the horse and carriage for money for a ticket to get the hell out of there.

She’s with George too.

As Oliver and Old Man Thompson frantically berate the ticket man about which passengers are on which ship, she explains to George that she was suffocating and would have died if she had to spend any more time in that house with Oliver. Oliver and Old Man Thompson learn she is on the ship for America. When they sneak in and find the two together, a fight breaks out between the brothers. When George is struck over the head with a candlestick by Victoria when she intended to hit Oliver, it seems George is dead. Oliver blames Victoria for killing his brother.

The next morning, Oliver says everything is taken care of. They will be able to say that George took off for America and never heard from again. Everything will be juuuuust fine! Old Man Thompson doesn’t seem all that upset that one of his kids is dead. I’m guessing Old Man Thompson has no love for George since he isn’t a prick like Oliver. Sure enough, Old Man Thompson says that George was the runt of the brothers and never like the others so it’s no big loss.

Time passes. Victoria narrates that everything was arranged by Oliver and his father. The accidental death of George was covered up and never mentioned again. They remind her constantly that she was protected by them and therefore should be grateful to them. She is now pregnant with Oliver’s child. But… Letters from Perth, Australia, addressed to Victoria, arrive from one George Thompson.

Meanwhile, Victoria is hatching some plans of her own. She begins to learn about the usage of chloroform. While the butler follows her around town, Oliver believes she will never learn that George isn’t actually dead. Victoria speaks to a man in town about seeking divorce. However this is going to prove difficult at this time. Oliver does not beat her. He does not “deprave her” of respect. There is no evidence or standing for her to secure a divorce.

Oliver reveals he knows what she does in town. He cannot trust her so he tells her that the butler will be accompanying her everywhere. He’ll report back to Oliver what she does, who she sees, what she thinks, and who she talks to. He plans to keep her monitored at least until the child arrives. As it turns out, soon after, she loses the baby when she miscarries. She laments to the preacher that she wishes what happened to the child happened to her instead. She feels she is cursed.

Seeing that another young woman often visits the preacher, Victoria pays him a visit and, with smiles and a flirty gleam in her eye, starts up a conversation with the preacher who likes to drink, smoke cigars, and collect “pagan” stuff he hangs on the wall. When he pours her a drink, she sits down and says that maybe she would do with someone waiting on her for once.

Later, when Oliver asks for her to trim his nose hairs, as she has several times before, she has to go looking for the shears. What she finds are all the hidden letters from George. Later, she continues to spend time with the preacher. She and Oliver entertain him for dinner. She suggests they go to the beach, but Oliver rebuffs it by saying he’s too busy with work. So she goes with the preacher instead.

Victoria begins to read from Dr. Mesmer’s book on the unconscious that was given to her by the preacher. She’s reading from it when Oliver gets drunk and waits for her to trim those goddamn nose hairs of his. As she reads aloud and holding up the shears in front of his face, he passes out. The next time the preacher joins them for dinner, Oliver talks about how she reads to him and she reveals what it is she was reading from. Oliver says he wants to try hypnosis and she urges the preacher to attempt to put him into a trance, but it doesn’t work. Victoria asks the preacher to try her instead and it works. While in trance, the preacher suggests to Victoria that she kisses “the man she loves” and when Oliver leans in to kiss her, she does not turn away as she normally does. The preacher asks if he should wake her up and Oliver is like, “Nah… Go ahead and retire for the night ol’ buddy. I’ll stay with Victoria for a bit.”

Later, Victoria tells the maid that Oliver is not feeling well and she needs to fetch the doctor. When the doctor visits to look over Oliver, he asks if he ever had a “man’s disease” (like VD) and in order to cure these things, mercury is often used. Oliver says he’s definitely not diseased in that way. The doctor knows he’s been poisoned but he doesn’t know how. Victoria is quick to point out that he recently poisoned a bunch of rats in one of his stores. He insisted on being part of it and, like the idiot he is, removed his mask. The doctor now feels as though it’s confirmed that poison is the cause of his health issues.

Oliver says he’s asked his father to come and stay to provide company as he recovers his health. Victoria is not so sure that’s a good idea. While Oliver is mostly bedridden, Victoria reads the hidden letters from George. In one of the letters, it mentions that he hopes one day Providence will find a way to reunite the two of them. This gives Victoria some ideas…

Like moving to Rhode Island to be done with all these crazy Kiwis.

Nah, I’m kidding. Soon, Victoria takes over preparing Oliver’s “special” diet each day. In what I’m positive is just a coincidence, his condition worsens quickly. The doctor tries calming Oliver down by saying he’s just had a spike in his fever temperature, but Oliver says that life is losing its grip on him and his gums are bleeding. You can see dark lines on his gums the base of his teeth. It’s pretty good makeup making him look like he’s in such bad shape and that his gums could be bleeding and about to cause his teeth to fall out.

The doctor becomes a near-permanent fixture in the Thompsons’ house. He can’t quite figure out why Oliver’s condition has worsened. However, Victoria narrates that she alone had the ability to help calm Oliver down and help him sleep. It’s based on what she’s learned from Dr. Mesmer’s book. Whatever she’s doing in that regard doesn’t prevent the need for Olver to have his teeth removed.

Some more time passes and Oliver has passed away. When Old Man Thompson arrives to pay his respects to Oliver, he blames Victoria for his son’s death. He says that he will see her hanged for this. When performing an autopsy, the doctor immediately realizes something is not right with the condition of Oliver’s internal organs… It smells of chloroform.

She is arrested for murdering Oliver by way of poisoning. The narration is Victoria writing a letter to George. Her lawyer plans to defend her by basically building the case that Oliver was cruel to Victoria. She hoped to have the preacher called as a witness to defend her as he would know how they lived and how unhappy the marriage was. But, womp womp… About the same time she was arrested, he was transferred by his church elsewhere. The defense attorney believes it was Japan where he was sent.

The maid testifies at the trial that she would hear the preacher and Victoria talking often alone in a room, even sometimes laughing. However, whenever she brought tea, the two would remain quiet. The doctor does say that chloroform, even in the smallest amount, would damage the throat and esophagus, but if it passed to his stomach it would begin the process of poisoning him to death. However, when he examined Oliver, the throat was not damaged, but there was a whole bunch of chloroform in the stomach. He can’t really reconcile how there would be so much in the stomach but no damage to the throat.

It turns out that the doctor did actually know there was chloroform was in the house. In a flashback, Victoria told him that Oliver would act frightening to her as his condition worsened. She says the preacher was able to provide her with chloroform so that she could use to basically put him to sleep. He testifies that he believed it was in the house to help treat the dogs for… something. In the flashback, you see that he broke the bottle after telling her that the treatment must now only be administered by him alone. He tells the court the bottle was broken but less than half the bottle had been used when he examined it.

While the defense attorney gives his closing argument, we see Victoria retell her part of the story by way of remembering in a flashback when Oliver was sick and still alive. He asked her to read to him while he lay in bed. As she read, she begins to realize that he was easily susceptible to her moving the nose hair trimming shears back and forth in front of his eyes as she used her other hand to rub her dress to make a rhythmic sound to place him into a trance. Apparently, this was not the first time. She tells George in her letter that this was the norm for her to be able to hypnotize him. That particular night, she fed him chloroform while he was in a trance. He drank it without pain or resistance and a short while later, he seemingly died.

However, as she looks out the window and her narration finishes her letter to George, Oliver gets out of bed. He sneaks up behind her and begins strangling her. When it seems as though he has wrung the life out of her, he begins to convulse and he dies. Whether or not this is what really happened or if it’s some play within her mind that represents her conscience.

When the arguments conclude, the jury has one more question for the doctor… If chloroform was given to someone against their will, would there be any indication in the body that it was so? He says no and reaffirms that there were no signs of it being taken against his will. That lines up with the story Victoria told of that final night of Oliver’s life that he took it without resistance while in trance, and it leads to the jury delivering a verdict of not guilty.

She sends a letter to George and they reunite. There’s a blurb at the end that states that he story was based on a real person, crime, and trial. The belief was that she and her lover absconded to America to begin a new life after she was found not guilty of murder. That last part lines up with what is believed to have happened to Adelaide Bartlett.

Is Mesmerized a good movie? To an extent, yes. The interesting thing about this movie is that it looks and is produced like a TV movie. It’s in 1.33:1 ratio. It has the resolution of old VHS or television broadcasts. Most telling of all is that it’s a crime movie and one based on a true crime at that. It’s a movie that I’m not sure you would see on the ABC Movie of the Week on broadcast television, but possibly something like A&E back in the day. Generally speaking it looked fine and was decently well shot and crafted.

Jodie Foster is a great actress. She’s endlessly watchable, especially if you are like me who had a big crush on her back when I was younger. She brings a certain level of capability to her performance as Victoria, but it’s actually not a home run. She’s far from bad, she’s just suitable. That’s like saying instead of hitting a home run to help the team win a game, she was able to get a couple singles and a walk – good and doing her part well, but not winning the game herself.

John Lithgow on the other hand? Oh, he was great. He was hitting home runs. He plays Oliver Thompson exceptionally well. When we first meet him, he’s kind of bashful and kind and a little sweet. You almost sense he’s lonely and would like to have someone to share his life. I get it, brother. I’m not so sure about going to the orphanage and getting a wife the same way you might adopt a kitten, but, hey, it was 1880. Things were different back then. He excels in this movie by varying his threat level and his verbose idiocy.

What I mean by that is that when he’s with his father, he comes off as this authoritarian. He barks orders. He looks to be constantly seeking his father’s approval. He’s kind of unserious in that way. In fact, when his illness is brought on by being an idiot about taking part in gassing the rats at his business, he does so to try to look tough and like a leader. Yet, he’s deeply insecure.

However, he does have this element to him that is scary. He becomes imposing at times. He wants things from Victoria that she is uncomfortable with. He flippantly says things about how he does not trust her or how she is lucky she was never tried for “killing” George. Except for when he is trying to throttle her at the very end of his life, he never gets physical with her. Still, he’s scary. He’s imposing. Keep in mind that Jodie Foster is a small woman. It’s part of the wonder of her being cast in Silence of the Lambs. She’s small and demure and feminine. John Lithgow is rather tall. He stands thirteen inches taller than her. It creates a natural threat to her and we can see it in subtle ways in how he looks down (literally) on her. When he creeps up behind her to throttle her in his last moments of life, you can see the top of her head does not even reach his chin. It’s like having Frankenstein’s monster approach someone. It creates this threat so well and Lithgow is so good at leaning into that. And that’s where the movie excels.

The movie really should have been titled something else. Mesmerized makes it sound more scandalous or sensational than it really is. Yes, the character of Victoria does learn about the use of hypnosis from the writings of Dr. Mesmer which would have been enticing and popular back then. Yes, she does later say it became customary for her to place Oliver in a trance, but we only ever see her successfully do this twice in the whole movie. We had to be told in dialogue that she was successfully doing this to him when we only ever saw her succeed when he was drunk and the preacher failed totally while being successful in entrancing her.

A more sensational movie would have leaned into her doing that to Oliver more often or having the ideas of how she could be freed from her unhappy marriage implanted into her by, say, the preacher. It was clear that while she tells the doctor that she and the preacher loved each other as siblings, they were attracted sexually to one another and might have engaged in an affair based on what the maid said, again in dialogue, at the trial. This movie has a framework of something more but is limited by its 89-minute runtime. Still… Not a bad movie if you are interested in movies based on true crimes.

Next week, we actually DO have a TV movie to review. Join me as we head to Vegas to check in on Lesley Ann Warren, Rita Moreno, and Tony Curtis and help bring into focus a Portrait of a Showgirl. Now, if you don’t mind me, I’m gonna go and get mesmerized by Jodie Foster’s incredible blue eyes.