How Awful About Allan is a 1970 television film thriller, directed by Curtis Harrington, his second collaboration with writer Henry Farrell, and starring Anthony Perkins, Julie Harris, Joan Hackett and Kent Smith (Cat People, 1942). It premiered on the ABC Movie of the Week on September 22nd, 1970, and was produced by prolific television producer Aaron Spelling.
Allan (Perkins) is suffering from hysterical blindness following a fire that killed his university professor father and scarred his sister Katherine (Harris). Returning home after months in a hospital, Allan begins to hear his name being whispered and partially sees a dark figure coming to get him. Is he crazy or is someone really out to get him?
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“Things unfortunately fall apart a bit at the end, but the cat-and-mouse-through-a-frosted-windshield act is really delicious for a while. I wish that Allan had been a little nicer of a guy to start out with, but when you’ve got hot scenes of a blind man driving off in his ex-girlfriend’s car in a panic and causing mass chaos in the streets, you kind of overlook his bad attitude. The ending is definitely of the WTF? variety, but for the most part it feels similar in tone to other parlor movies of the time (like The House that Would Not Die). Not the best, maybe, but still a lot of fun — and Perkins and Harris make it easy to get through.” Camp Blood
“How Awful About Allan is technically quite well-made— especially for a TV movie— and both Anthony Perkins and Julie Harris give highly effective performances, but none of that can prevent the film from feeling like it’s misplaced its point somewhere.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting
“The script, meanwhile, is really a perfect mash-up of everything else Henry Farrell wrote; it’s got crazy siblings, dark old houses, unnerving flashbacks, and LOTS of name whispering (by the end of the movie, the name “Allan” will sound a lot like nails raking down a chalkboard).” Tower Farm Reviews
Buy Curtis Harrington’s Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood memoirs from Amazon.com
Image courtesy of VHSCollector.com
