The Turning

Yes, Scully fans, all you’ve heard about this film is true. Gillian Anderson gets her top off in this waste of celluloid from 1992. Don’t get mental on the subject though; it’s so brief as to be purely exploitative to sell the DVD on the strength of this. She appears in exactly three scenes and none of them are necessary to the plot; in fact, they are basically to support the gratuitous (and weak) sex scene included to fill out an otherwise dud storyline.

The mysterious Clifford hitchhikes home to Pocahontas, Virginia. He’s been away for four years and he’s come back to try and fix his parents’ dead marriage and reconcile them before a divorce happens. Too late, he discovers his parents don’t want his help, they’re happy getting divorced and his father Mark already has himself another gal. When Cliff hears of this he sets in motion a chain of events to try and split them up, but things don’t work out the way this slow witted fella planned and soon he is sent spiralling away into his own twisted logic.

It’s a rather lacklustre storyline and one that deals with some issues that have been dealt with much better elsewhere. Ms Anderson’s role is so slight that her blatant sales power on the cover is insulting. I can’t imagine even her very brief nudity warrants this as being one for Anderson fans. Whilst some good performances are turned (heh) in by Karen Allen and Raymond J. Barry, the script is the real letdown here and its rhetoric is forced and unaffecting. Some tacky Nazi sentiment is used throughout, but we’ve heard (and learned to ignore) all that long ago. This seems to be the driving force behind Clifford’s growing unhingedness, but it is delivered without force of character or real will.

As a story it drags on through a couple of days, and inevitably starts to feel that way to us as well. Even though it clocks in at only 88 minutes, it feels a lot longer. I understand why the ‘love’ scene was put in now anyway. And once watching it, so will you.

Well it’s 4:3 and therefore unenhanced. It contains artefacts, but nothing too major. However, there are noticeable occasions of black specks on light backgrounds and vice versa. The nightshots are grainy in both interiors and exteriors, but thankfully a lot of this takes place during the daylight or Cliff’s mom’s well lit trailer. One of the nightshots has some piece of crap caught in the lens or camera or something and you can have a go at figuring it out for yourself at 5:25 through 5:30. As to blacks, they look natural, but the shadows really suck up the details.

Although shot in 1992 (and released much later) the music smacks of the ’80s. Not tracks either, I mean synthesisers and such. It’s pretty lame. Merle Haggard does get a track in there though, and there are actually a couple more from people I’ve never heard of or cared about.

Dialogue is fairly well spoken, though everyone has an irritating southern drawl, particularly our boy Cliff, but they all pull it off fairly well. The sound effects are all okay as well, although there aren’t many used. At least they were recorded at the scene of this crime and not dubbed in later. It all comes to us in Dolby Digital stereo, by the way. 4:3, stereo... I’m thinking telemovie here.

We don’t even get a menu here. Straight to the action for us, and when it’s over it just starts again. Woo.

This is daytime television fodder. Midday movie on a Thursday or 3am Tuesday morning with upholstery renovation and call-me-now ads.

...And they’d probably be more entertaining too. I would recommend this as a beer coaster, but if you just gotta see it, this is a rental - but only once it comes down to ten cents a semester.