Myra Savage isn’t just your run-of-the-mill psychic. She’s got ambition; the woman just needs a little free media. So it is in Seance on a Wet Afternoon, a psychological thriller starring Kim Stanley (The Right Stuff) as the aforementioned psychic and Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park) as her long-suffering, henpecked husband, Billy.
The pair kidnap the daughter of a wealthy London couple in a cockamamie scheme that would find Myra demonstrating her clairvoyant chops to police by helping them find the girl. But the best-laid plans of mystics named Myra, wouldn’t you know, oft go astray. Or something like that.
Stanley, an American actress whose most notable work had been on the stage, only snagged the role of Myra after a string of other would-be leads, including Deborah Kerr and Shelley Winters, fizzled out. Good for the gods of casting. Stanley, magnificently creepy as the increasingly unhinged woman, earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Seance, but lost to Julie Andrews, who had more pleasant interaction with children in that year’s Mary Poppins.
Attenborough, who also co-produced, is every bit her equal. The direction by Bryan Forbes (1975’s The Stepford Wives) is sharp, unfussy and atmospheric. It’s a perfect picture to DVR and watch on a wet afternoon. —Phil Bacharach