Audrey Rose

Audrey Rose
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Wise
Produced by	Frank De Felitta Joe Wizan
Written by	Frank De Felitta
Starring	Marsha Mason Anthony Hopkins John Beck Susan Swift
Music by	Michael Small
Cinematography	Victor J. Kemper
Editing by	Carl Kress
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	April 6, 1977
Running time	113 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Audrey Rose is a 1977 horror film, with metaphysical content, directed by Robert Wise, starring Marsha Mason and Anthony Hopkins. It was based on the novel of the same title by Frank De Felitta. The original music score was composed by Michael Small.

Plot

Ivy Templeton (Susan Swift) is a nearly eleven year old girl, living with her parents, Janice and Bill Templeton (Marsha Mason and John Beck), in New York. The parents notice a stranger stalking them over the course of a few weeks, and discover, over lunch with him, that his name is Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins), and that he is convinced their daughter is a reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose, who died in a fiery car accident, along with his wife, two minutes before Ivy was born. Hoover had come to believe this through information given to him by two clairvoyant psychics. Bill asks a friend of his, an attorney, to hide in their apartment to hear Hoovers full story to build a case against him, but when Hoover speaks Audrey's name out loud, Ivy hears him from her room and enters an altered state where she cannot be calmed down without the assistance of Hoover. In this state, she bangs her hands on a window and becomes burned, which Hoover says is a result of his daughter's experience of being burned alive in the car.

Janice is afraid of Hoover but is also concerned for her daughter, while Bill is hostile to Hoover and demands he stay away. Ivy continues to be disturbed by nightmares which keep getting worse. Hoover appears at their home during one of her nightmares, and at the request of the mother Hoover is able to calm Ivy down by calling to her as Audrey Rose, but is arrested for allegedly briefly abducting her to his recently rented upstairs apartment. The film then moves forward some months to an ongoing trial, where Hoover is attempting to persuade a jury that his actions were necessary to grant his daughter's spirit peace. The trial has become a worldwide phenomenon, with a Hindu holy man giving an explanation of reincarnation as testimony. Hoover testifies in court that after his daughter's death, Hoover had traveled to India and become a believer in reincarnation and Hinduism. Janice comes to believe Hoover's story, and testifies as much, but Bill does not, and has their lawyer request Ivy be hypnotized to show she is not a reincarnation of Audrey Rose. During the hypnosis, Ivy revisits the traumatic car crash as Audrey Rose and dies during the relived trauma.

The last scene is Janice writing a letter to Hoover thanking him for transporting Ivy/Audrey's ashes to India, and indicating this is with her husband's permission, who she says has started to accept what she and Hoover believe to be true. The movie closes on a quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita:

"There is no end. For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does it ever cease to be. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval..."

Main cast

• Marsha Mason - Janice Templeton
• Anthony Hopkins - Elliot Hoover
• John Beck - Bill Templeton
• Susan Swift - Ivy Templeton
• Norman Lloyd - Dr. Steven Lipscomb
• John Hillerman - Prosecutor Scott Velie
• Robert Walden - Brice Mack

Reception

The film received poor reviews, including one from Vincent Canby at the New York Times, who said of it, "The soul of the movie is that of "The Exorcist" instantly recycled."^[1]

References

External links

• Audrey Rose at the American Film Institute website
• Audrey Rose at the Internet Movie Database
• Audrey Rose at AllRovi
• Audrey Rose at the TCM Movie Database
• Audrey Rose at Rotten Tomatoes website