The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud

Review from TV Guide
This picture is, in some ways, similar to another reincarnation film made three years before, THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY. Max Ehrlich's best-seller was adapted by the author for the screen and manages to spend more time on character development than most of these occult stories, which is a plus. Sarrazin, a bright young professor, realizes he harbors a ghost inside him when his dreams take a strange, bizarre turn. To track down the source of these nightmares he goes to a small New England town where he learns that Kidder (who is wonderful in her role and plays it in two time frames, then and now) murdered her cheating husband, Stephano, whose spirit now haunts Sarrazin. Kidder is frustrated and filled with remorse, and she both loves and hates the memory of the man she killed. When she meets Sarrazin she realizes he is the reincarnation of Stephano, but another complication arises as Kidder's daughter, O'Neill, falls in love with Sarrazin, although she is, after a fashion, his own daughter. Sarrazin's girl friend, Sharpe, can only watch as matters begin to entangle. Throughout these events Hecht, a parapsychologist, is monitoring Sarrazin. Finally, the surprise ending cheats a bit and weakens the film as a whole. The plot gets mired in its own complications at times and you have to concentrate on what's happening or lose the thread. Ehrlich, the writer, was about as mild-mannered a man as ever sat at a typewriter, yet he wrote several superior sci-fi and terror pieces as well as First Train to Babylon, which became THE NAKED EDGE. Some eerie sequences and a sexually explicit scene with Kidder in the bathtub make this a poor picture for the youngsters.


Heres Rotten Tomatoes Review

Movie Info

Max Ehrlich adapted his own novel for the screen in this fitfully amusing paranormal thriller. College professor Michael Sarrazin feels that someone else is inside him, and is led by his dreams to a small town where Margot Kidder (Black Christmas, Superman) has murdered her cheating husband. She senses something odd about Sarrazin too, even more so when he falls for Jennifer O'Neill (Scanners), who may or may not be his and Kidder's daughter. Regardless of its merits, this film will probably best be remembered for its poster art, which depicts an anguished Sarrazin being smashed in the testicles with a boat paddle. That's what happens when actors do things like turn down Midnight Cowboy. Director J. Lee Thompson later went on to direct the even less subtle Happy Birthday to Me. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

“The Reincarnation of Peter Proud” is a movie, of thesuspense-thriller genre, that was released in 1975. It concerns a Californian college professor, Dr. Peter Proud (Michael Sarrazin) who is traumatized by recurring nightmares that haunt him. He is even more baffled when after attending a ‘sleep lab’, he finds out that his dreams do not register as dreams; in fact, they do not register at all. One evening, he sees a local documentary on the television entitled, “America Past & Present.” He is increasingly rattled, filled with dread and fearful when sees his very ‘visions’ being played out in front of his eyes – yet it is of a place that he has never seen or visited before. He becomes more and more convinced that he has experienced flashbacks of an earlier incarnation of himself. He finally manages to visit the American town that features in his dreams and finds himself unwittingly in the company of  the wife of his previous birth – Marcia Curtis (Margot Kidder). Marcia soon discovers – to her increasing horror – that Peter shares startlingly similar behavioral characteristics with that of her late husband

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