When I first got into horror, I was especially drawn to movies that had that cringeworthy factor. The cheesey to the max writing, the bad decisions made by bad actors that led to ultimately bad lines that made you go “What??” and hit rewind. I feel like as I’ve gotten older, my love for the so-bad-it’s-good has disapated, but that’s only because as everyone has caught on to the magic of the films, they’ve started trying to manufacture the feeling. Every so often, an indie film comes along that doesn’t completely miss the mark, but for the most part, bad-on-purpose is just bad. It has to be authentic.
The film I want to talk about today is the 1970 made for tv thriller, How Awful About Allan. While it’s earned itself a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, you really shouldn’t avoid this psychological journey that one IMDb reviewer called “Fine.” I first found this film in a bin at Walmart for a couple bucks. I knew it was gold as soon as I laid my eyes on it. That title. It was just so stupid. My belief in the awesomeness of my find was intensified when, to my delight, the spelling of “Allan” in the title was different on the front cover than in the opening sequence.
(Clearly, a lot of care went into this)
I should also mention that it was a double feature, so on that fateful day, I also became the owner of Murder Mansion, and that beautiful piece of shit will definitely be talked about in a future blog post.
But first, a movie that peaks in its first scene. We open on Allan/Allen, played by Psycho’s Anthony Perkins, being jolted awake. He throws his bedroom door open, runs down the hallway, and flings open another door. This room is entirely filled with fire. In the center, we see an older man, clinging to a ladder, and gasping out “help me, Allan/Allen!” over and over. Because he chose to go up a ladder instead of walking out the door, he dies, both suddenly, and dramatically. Allan/Allen stands there in horror while a woman runs up the stairs screaming and heads directly into the flames. Cut to a neighbor woman, calling for help while watching the fire blaze out the window. She runs barefoot out of the house, screaming for Allan/Allen, with more people following after her down the street. Allan/Allen walks out of the house (I mean, why run; the fire was contained to one corner room.) and we see for the first time his ridiculous pajama getup. He delivers the following, dead pan:
“Father’s dead. Olive, it’s my fault.”
This woman, Olive, leads him away from the door, so that he doesn’t block the focus of the next scene. A good crowd has gathered since something interesting is finally happening in this goddamn town. We hear oooh’s and aahh’s as a man (who is this man?) carries a lifeless looking female body out of the house. He sets her down on the ground, and exactly as the camera zooms in on her and she turns her head to the side, we hear a blood-curdling scream. Cut to an older neighbor woman, eating her fist and looking horrified in her hair curlers. She mumbles something incoherent into her hand that ends with “her face is burned.” Thanks. We needed that clarification.
Then we see this woman, absolutely disgusted, like she just watched the end result of this night on set. I love her. 
Olive pushes past her, and grabs onto Allan/Allen’s arm. Then the whole movie comes to a screeching halt as he, monotone once again, mutters:
“Olive. I can’t see. I can’t see.
I’m blind.”
Bam! What a revelation. What a twist. What a line read! And Aaron Spelling Productions comes at the screen in bold letters. Thank god it’s 1970. Ten more years and we would have also had to watch Tori try to act in this mess.
The credits finish, and we are thrown into a sea of exposition. We discover that Allan/Allen is suffering from something called “hysterical blindness,” which is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard of. We find out that he left pain cans and thinner next to the heater the night of the fire, and that he needs to be told repeatedly that he didn’t do it deliberately. We are shown the blurry outlines of what Allan/Allen sees, a recurring film choice throughout, and are told that during his stay at the psych ward, he’s had a partial recovery, all thanks to his recognizing his resentment of his father and sister’s close relationship. All he has to do to fully recover, is to deal with his guilt over his father’s death, and in turn, his sister’s disfigurement. My second favorite line is the doctor telling him that “the plastic device she wears is very successful; it’s barely noticeable.” Because you just know we are in for a real treat. The doctor gives Allan/Allen some parting advice to spill his thoughts into a tape recorder. Seems stupid, but then, so is the diagnosis.
His sister Catherine, (played by Julie Harris) picks him up from the hospital and takes him back home, which is completely unharmed from the fire. He almost trips over a standing “room for rent” sign in the yard, but Catherine tells him it’s just a stick that some neighbor kids must have left.
Just then, Olive comes running down the street, as she does. Allan/Allen runs inside and shuts the door, and Catherine suggests coming back tomorrow. “She’s heard things,” Catherine says to the back of Allan/Allen, who ran inside just to stand with his back to the door. “You were engaged.”
Oh. So that’s who she is.
We spend the next few minutes watching Allan/Allen wonder through the house, making snide comments and being kind of a dick. We find out that Catherine is having money problems and can’t afford to heat the house.
Ironic.
We also learn that her former love, Eric has moved to Australia to “make his fortune” and she believes he has found someone else. Allan/Allen proclaims that he never liked Eric. The next day, he walks in on her lighting a fireplace in a spare room (is this the father’s room?) and she confesses that she’s been renting it out to college students. There is a new one coming today, and the best name they could give him is HAROLD DENNIS.
He has a throat injury, because of course he does, and can’t speak above a whisper. We continue watching Allan/Allen behave like a petulant child who isn’t getting his way, and then we meet HAROLD DENNIS. We pretty much only see HAROLD DENNIS from Allan/Allen’s POV but it’s pretty obvious that it’s his sister, bundled up in winter wear and whispering at him.
Allan/Allen is skeptical and bratty but because he is always like this, we don’t even give him any credit for being suspicious of all this weird shit happening. As a protagonist, he’s pretty terrible to watch. I have almost no empathy toward him because he’s just awful. Maybe they should have named this film “How Awful About Allan Surviving the Fire.”
By now, he’s hearing voices all of the time whispering his name. He starts saying that he thinks “the boarder” is after him, and he has some crack pot theory about HAROLD DENNIS actually being Eric, which like… why? He starts looking for proof, and at one point just kind of slices his hand open with a knife and tells Olive that “sometimes a lie is justified if it’s what it takes,” or some crap like that. The next few scenes are of Catherine making Allan/Allen think that he’s insane; even saying that there has never been a boarder. Then there’s a scene where he puts pants on over his pj pants and I still am so uncomfortable with this decision. Like, does that save time? Doesn’t he feel his pj pants riding up his legs? Basically, we watch him going crazy for the remainder of the movie, until Catherine finally comes after him in a ski mask, and he struggles with her, until finally being able to pin her down and rip off her mask, he, miraculously, can see again. Then he peels off her “plastic device” like it’s just a thin piece of latex, to reveal normal skin underneath. She had all of the burn scarring removed (sure, that’s easy) but wanted to pretend like it was still there to keep guilting the guy who couldn’t see it anyway. This family sucks.
In the end, Catherine is now the one in the psych ward, and Allan/Allen is back with Olive. He gets a letter from Catherine, and as he reads her words, “I know you’ll try to get me out of here, since you remember how much you hated being here, yourself,” He is stricken blind with guilt once more! The freakin end.
I know it sounds like I hated this movie. And I kinda did. But I’ve seen it three or four times, so clearly I love to hate it. Leave your own love to hate films in the comments. I may just watch one and write about it.
Til next time,
🔪Madame of Horror
Madame of Horror 
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