Review of The Sign of the Ram

You know the minute you read the credit that comes all by itself very early in the movie -- "The return to the screen of / Susan Peters" -- that this film will be her de facto magnum opus, her masterwork. You are therefore not surprised when the the camera lingers time and again on Peters, left hand contracting like a sinister claw, facial expressions that keep hovering from neutral to grimly pleased with her own successful manipulations to horrified that plans have gone awry. That's why the other characters can only make so much of an impression. The opening scene of the arrival of the new secretary promises much of that woman, but by the end of the film she is reduced to a blank stare while stroking an errant child's hair. What do you call character development that goes backwards -- deconstruction? Technically too, it seems all the effort went into making the Peters character look striking. Could they really not have bothered to re-record the music of the finale when they surely realized it was too distorted to be pleasant, not to mention effective? Who cares, so long as we get the shots with the lady in the wheelchair right. Rather crudely put, but think about it.