The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2022) There’s a special subgenre of downbeat 1970s horror films that simply don’t work for me. The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is one more of those, a slow-paced horror melodrama in which a man seeking the meaning of vivid recurring dreams realizes they’re visions from an earlier life and goes (back?) to Massachusetts to learn more and eventually inhabit the life he left. The film, to its credit, does zig and zag in mildly unexpected directions, finding its way into horror after spending most of its duration in eerie drama. Director J. Lee Thompson turns in a mysteriously photographed, darkly-tinted result that aspires to more than a shlock monster film. Does it work beyond being watchable? Maybe. Getting there is a journey, considering that The Reincarnation of Peter Proud takes a very long time to become interesting. I’m sure that devotees of other similar horror films of the period will get more of a kick out of it.