The Reincarnate (1971)

The Reincarnate (Canada, 1971) 99 min color DIR: Don Haldane. SCR-PROD: Seeleg Lester. DOP: Norman C. Allin. EDITOR: George Appleby. MUSIC: Milan Kymlicka. CAST: Jack Creley, Jay Reynolds, Trudy Young, Hugh Webster. (Meridian Films)

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I really had to hand it to City TV. Quite often, their idea of competing with the major networks during prime time was to schedule a nearly forgotten Canadian film like The Reincarnate in the revered 8 o’clock movie time slot. 

By the time I had caught The Reincarnate on City-TV in that wintry Sunday evening in 1985, most Canadians would have preferred that our cinematic heritage remained forgotten, except for the odd title like Mon Oncle Antoine. At first we all seemed to root for “our little cinema that could”, when the burgeoning industry produced some terrific features in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, after too many bad or mediocre ones (especially during the infamous tax shelter era of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s), many Canadian viewers had soured on our homegrown project.

History does not record if City-TV deliberately programmed these films to compete with other networks during the coveted prime time daypart (when most people were at home in front of the tube), or simply stuck these on to honour CanCon legislation, because they figured viewers would be watching something else anyway. Whatever the case, this resulted in a lot of our vintage homegrown cinema getting seen! Friends and co-workers would often talk about the Canadian movie they saw on City the previous night. Programming titles like The Rainbow Boys or Deserters in prime time ensured them longer shelf lives after often disappointing theatrical runs.

In its initial release, The Reincarnate was unique as the rare horror film made in Canada. This was still a few years before “tax shelter terrors” like Shivers and Prom Night hit the screens. After the night’s viewing, I went to the public library to look up the film in those decade-old books on Canadian cinema, relics from our nationalist pride in homegrown film that seemed to be in every public library’s reference section. I was surprised to read that The Reincarnate had largely negative reviews upon its release, because I thought highly of it. To its credit, after nearly forty years and several thousand viewings of other films, I still remember its creepy atmosphere. 

Alas, after revisiting the movie via the Magnum home video release, one concludes it is best some times to let memories just remain memories. (Sadly, much of our Canadian film heritage only exists today, thanks to VHS recordings.)

The plot is serviceable enough: dying lawyer Everet Julian (Jack Creley) chooses promising young sculptor David (Jay Reynolds) as the host in which his spirit can remain after his passing. However the movie appears to have been made by people have who have never seen a horror movie. It is drowned with way too much exposition, over-explaining all of the occult backstory, perhaps to appease the investors who probably haven’t seen one either.

Genre films can have a shorthand, where the intended audience fills in the blanks. Perhaps that is why the subplot featuring Ruthie (Trudy Young) as the unwitting virgin sacrifice is much more interesting. The direction by Don Haldane (of the NFB classic, The Drylanders, and TV’s The Beachcombers!) is mainly routine, but still The Reincarnate has one truly great scene, where Ruthie is getting hot and heavy with her boyfriend. Suddenly a black cat crashes through the skylight window, and a shard of glass punctures the boyfriend’s jugular, killing him instantly. Sadly, even a moment like this is undone, as in the very next scene it is recapped by someone, in case we didn’t get the point.

The best scenes are with the black cat motif because they are left ambiguous, as if to suggest that a supernatural power is controlling Ruthie’s destiny. There are also some creepy moments at the altar of the sacrifice; especially lingering in memory are the shots of a body in a crypt, revealed to be the former host of the spirit currently living in Julian, who mentions that his own body will soon be replacing it.

Both of my viewings of The Reincarnate are influenced by the circumstances under which I viewed them. My fondness for the film so long ago had much to do with the creepy atmosphere that was enhanced by the dark murky print that City TV had aired. (Curiously, their copy’s onscreen title was Le sacrifice d’une vierge, its Quebec release.) The Magnum VHS however has a transfer that is too bright. The lighting is flattened like a shot-on-video production; coupled with the endless exposition, it more resembles a bad soap opera. It sadly reminds us of the cinema we tried to have and so often fell short thanks to poor production values.

Still credit is due the strong performances by Trudy Young, a promising starlet whose credits include the Canadian classics Homer and Face-Off, and especially Jack Creley. Horror fans perhaps remember him best as Brian O’Blivion in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but in Casa G-Man he will be forever enshrined as the editor Mr. Morton in the TVO program Write On, and as the professor in the immortal Lowney’s Glossette’s commercial (“Gates! Glossettes again?!?”)