Ruby is a 1977 horror drama film directed by Curtis Harrington, and was one of his last horror films. It stars Piper Laurie, Stuart Whitman and Roger Davis
Plot Teaser
In 1935, a lowlife mobster, Nikki Rocco, is betrayed and executed in the swampy backwoods as his pregnant gun-moll, Ruby Claire watches. He swears vengeance with his dying breath, and then she suddenly goes into labour. Sixteen years later in 1951, Ruby is now running a drive-in theatre in the backwoods near her home and employs some ex-mobsters. Her 16-year-old daughter, Leslie Claire, is mute and has been since birth.
Soon strange and bizarre accidents claim the lives of Ruby’s employees, then Leslie begins to show strange behaviour, and then begins to speak… in her dead father’s voice. Nikki Rocco possesses his daughter’s body and terrorizes Ruby with levitations, telekinesis, maniacal laughing and bizarre sexual aggression…
Ruby was long available on video in the U.S. only in a butchered version that was re-edited (and apparently re-shot by director Stephanie Rothman) for television, deleting the R-rated violence and adding new dialogue scenes. VCI‘s DVD is presented in its original theatrical version; however, this is not a director’s cut: it contains Krantz’s abrupt, horror ending rather than Harrington’s intended romantic one.
Prior to the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Ruby was the top grossing independent film.
Buy Ruby on DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Reviews
“Mr. Harrington delivers the scares. He is a filmmaker from the Hitchcock school in that he uses suspense rather than shocks to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. This is not to say the film doesn’t have several well placed shocks, it does! This is an excellent movie.” Rusty White’s Film World
“While never entirely leaving the film’s quickie exploitation nature behind, Curtis Harrington crafts it with a series of often striking set-pieces – bodies tossed about and impaled on trees; Stuart Whitman being pursued by supernatural winds; that wonderfully EC Comics-esque moment where a severed head is found attached to the interior of a Coke vending machine; and the genuine surprise moment when Janit Baldwin (an almost neglected actress who gives a eerily spooky performance) is revealed as possessed – that lifts Ruby well above most Exorcist copycats.” Moria
“Cheaply made but fairly well acted, Ruby is well paced and features a few decent murder set pieces but borrow a lot from The Exorcist in spots. The film fails to convince us of its fifties setting (everyone looks very much like a product of the seventies here) but it’s entertaining enough, the way a fun B-grade horror movie can be.” Rock! Shock! Pop!
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