Kar-2 Review of The Mephisto Waltz

The Mephisto Waltz (1971)

Excellent occult thriller with a surprising end, worth to be seen

[9/10 · 19 December 1999]

This is one of the best occult thrillers ever made. Direction, acting, cinematography and the music score are superb as is the script based on the Fred Mustard Stewart novel with the same title. Curd Juergens plays a famous concert pianist and Barbara Parkins his adoring incestuous daughter. Wanting to make their illicit love eternal they feel compelled to make ritualistic human sacrifices to Satan. The film aided by an excellent Jerry Goldsmith score manages to create an unsettling and more and more threatening atmosphere as the true nature of these two becomes clearer and a journalist played by Alan Alda gets drawn into their web. His wife, played by Jacqueline Bisset, sees the imminent danger in nightmares. These dream sequences that gradually unveil the shocking truth are extremely well filmed and the music enhances the emotional impact even further. This one is a real chiller with some very frightening moments and a very surprising end. Its many disturbing images will haunt you for quite some time. It proves that elegant filmmaking becomes the horror genre very well. I'd love to see The Mephisto Waltz released on DVD!