Flowers in the Attic doesn't live up to the novel from which it was based, but it keeps enough of what made it interesting in the first place and still manages to entertain. It all centers around a recently widowed woman and her 4 impossibly blonde children who find themselves without a cent in this world, so they move back in with her strict, religious family who suggest that the children hide away in the attic. You see, the children were the byproduct of the mother's relationship with her uncle and her father doesn't even know they exist, so the best chance to get back into her dying father's heart (and will) is to pretend they don't exist. This goes about as well as could be expected.
The camp level can be a bit high at times, some scenes are beautiful and haunting and some look like they came straight from a generic TV movie, Christopher Young's lush orchestral score goes for Oscar gold (it's easily the best part of the movie), and Victoria Tenant's shows all the emotions of a wet piece of cardboard.
If it weren't for Louise Fletcher's memorably scary performance as the religious fanatic grandmother, most people probably wouldn't remember this film, but she really is that good and deserves a lot of credit.
The camp level can be a bit high at times, some scenes are beautiful and haunting and some look like they came straight from a generic TV movie, Christopher Young's lush orchestral score goes for Oscar gold (it's easily the best part of the movie), and Victoria Tenant's shows all the emotions of a wet piece of cardboard.
If it weren't for Louise Fletcher's memorably scary performance as the religious fanatic grandmother, most people probably wouldn't remember this film, but she really is that good and deserves a lot of credit.