The film is based on Bob Rich’s novel “Looking Through Water”. It follows a father who, in an attempt to reconnect with his estranged son, invites him to Belize to compete in a father-son fishing competition.
Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders...
Teenaged siblings Girly and Sonny lure young men back to their home to meet the eccentric Mumsy and Nanny. There, the men are forced to take part in strange games, the rules of which are never defined - and if they refuse, or transgress the unwritten rules, they're killed. But they may have met their match in New Friend, their latest victim, who starts to manipulate the foursome, setting one against the other. Bizarre combination of late sixties avant garde and sleaze. Director Freddie Francis had made horrors for both Hammer and Amicus but this is nothing like any of them. Shot on location with an atmosphere mixing playground horror and conservatory theatre that is downright weird and unsettling. The great lost girl of sixties British horror, Vanessa Howard, shines as she does in those other rarely seen gems Corruption [1967] and What Became of Jack and Jill [1972]. If Harold Pinter had made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974] for the BBC this could have resulted. Excellent and unique.
