A Disaster Movie That’s the Disaster
The Medusa Touch is proof that not every supernatural thriller needs to exist—especially one that plays like a paranormal episode of Columbo if the detective had narcolepsy. Directed by Jack Gold and starring Richard Burton in the role of “man who sits in bed and glowers,” this British-French co-production is two hours of leaden monologues punctuated by the occasional collapsing building. You’d think a movie about a man who can kill with his mind would be thrilling. Instead, it’s the cinematic equivalent of being slowly menaced by a damp sponge.
Richard Burton: Patron Saint of Bad Mood Lighting
Burton plays John Morlar, a novelist whose superpower appears to be radiating alcoholic contempt from every pore. After being found with his skull caved in, he spends the rest of the film lying in a hospital bed, speaking in flashbacks or, more accurately, muttering at the speed of a melting candle. Burton’s delivery is so slow you could go out for groceries and still come back in time to catch the end of his sentence. It’s less acting and more a séance in which the medium is bored out of their mind.
The Detective Who Couldn’t Care Less
Enter Lino Ventura as Detective Brunel, a French policeman on loan to London, presumably to prove that cross-cultural police work can also be joyless. Ventura spends the movie trudging from one suspect to another like a man trying to return a defective toaster. His investigation consists mostly of looking puzzled while other characters dump exposition on him. By the end, he’s as convinced of Morlar’s powers as the audience is desperate for the credits to roll.
The World’s Laziest Apocalypse
Morlar’s life, we learn through endless flashbacks, has been a series of conveniently fatal “accidents” befalling people who annoy him. A judge drops dead after hearing Morlar’s courtroom rant. A jumbo jet plows into a skyscraper because Morlar felt like showing off for his psychiatrist, Dr. Zonfeld (Lee Remick, giving the film’s only performance that could pass for human). These disasters should be horrifying, but the film treats them with the urgency of a weather forecast. By the time the space mission subplot arrives, you’re rooting for the astronauts to escape the film entirely.
Lee Remick Deserves Better
Lee Remick’s Dr. Zonfeld is the lone spark in this drab séance of a movie. She plays her scenes like she’s in a real psychological thriller, which only makes the surrounding sludge feel sludgier. Her attempt to kill Morlar—by bashing in his skull with the same blunt determination the screenwriter used on the script—comes as a relief. Alas, she fails, and instead gives us one of cinema’s least convincing suicides, complete with a note that might as well have read: “Sorry, audience.”
The Special Effects: Sponsored by the Department of Cardboard
When Morlar finally brings down a cathedral on a congregation of VIPs, it should be the film’s horrifying pièce de résistance. Instead, it looks like someone filmed a shoebox diorama being shaken by an impatient child. Dust falls, extras scream politely, and the scene fades before anyone can call the union about hazard pay. The telekinetic mayhem that should define the movie ends up looking like the losing round on a low-budget game show.
A Telekinetic Villain Who’s Never Quite Awake
The problem with The Medusa Touch is that its central character is more interesting in theory than execution. A man with the power to kill at will could be terrifying, but Morlar’s targets are so petty—and his pacing so glacial—that you start to wonder if his real talent is for inducing naps. Even his climactic threat, scrawling “Windscale” as his next disaster, feels anticlimactic. A nuclear power station meltdown should be terrifying; here, it’s just one more entry in his diary of being a terrible neighbor.
The Final Curse
There’s a kind of accidental poetry in how The Medusa Touch drains the energy out of its own premise. It’s a supernatural thriller without thrills, a disaster movie without spectacle, and a Richard Burton performance without life. If Morlar truly had the power to destroy with his mind, the script would have been the first to go. As it stands, the film’s most impressive feat is convincing you that you’ve been watching it for three hours when it’s barely over two.
