"Audrey Rose" - C-

I don't know how horrific this one was, but 1977's "Audrey Rose" was lumped into that category on my cable service's on-demand movie options. So, I gave it a spin ....

Here's the deal: There's this family living it up in New York with their only child, a young girl named Ivy. Everything is going along swimmingly until this creepy guy starts following them around to their different destinations, particularly Ivy's school.

The family begins to worry, especially when the stranger calls their home to inquire after their daughter's wellbeing.

The mystery man eventually makes face-to-face contact to offer an extraordinary story about how he believes young Ivy could be sharing some inner soul space with his now-dead daughter — Audrey Rose.

Getting to the bottom: What on the surface sounds like the makings for a good, supernatural tale of the spine-tingling variety ends up struggling through fits and starts of interest and boredom. Before it reaches its completely anti-climactic ending, you will likely be mocking the things that are supposed to make "Audrey Rose" a thriller. The solid performances of Anthony Hopkins as the "mystery man" and debuting actress Susan Swift as "Ivy" cannot make up for the sluggishness of this film.

The movie is based on a novel I've never read, so I cannot judge the solidness of the source idea. But I do know that the author also adapted his work for the screen and served as a producer to director Robert Wise.

Wise was no lightweight in the director's kingdom — he had "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story" to his credit before "Audrey Rose," and he was later responsible for the rather unpleasant "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Either he kinda dropped the ball here, or the source material came flawed from the start.

I said it was supposed to be a chiller, but is it scary? Well ...... not really. The supernatural aspects are about incidental reincarnation, not malicious possession. The freak-out sequences where "Ivy" is taken over by "Audrey Rose" are sort of disturbing because of the believability that you are witnessing a traumatic event involving a child, but they aren't truly frightening.

Grade: C - (The leads are not phoning it in, but they are stuck in a dead-end flick .... If you're planning to have this one disturb you enough to stay up late into the night, forget it.)

Another resource: info on Robert Wise and the making of this movie