The Wind (1986)

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Greek director Nico Mastorakis gives us eighty minutes of solid suspense, then betrays his audience with a laughable climax.

Sian Anderson (Meg Foster) leaves boyfriend John (David McCallum) in Los Angeles and flies to a secluded island off Greece, using the isolation to write her next novel. Sian is no romance author, she pens violent murder mysteries. She rents a house from Elias (Robert Morley) and settles in, meeting her misfit neighbor and Elias' inadequate handyman Phil (Wings Hauser). Sian is warned to stay indoors at night, as the island experiences terrible windstorms on a daily basis. As she types away, Sian spots Phil burying something in the garden, and calls John, who is of little help half a planet away. Sian starts suspecting Phil of something more sinister than fixing leaky faucets, but her suspicions are excused as her violent imagination getting the best of her. The film turns into a game of cat and mouse between Phil and Sian, leading to a maddening finale.

This film made me mad. The director/co-writer had a neat thing going. Sian relies on her smarts to survive. Her talking to herself seems so natural, because she sounds like a reasonable human being. Phil flips out all at once, but Hauser does not turn him into an unstoppable killing machine. Steve Railsback's Kesner is so out of the blue, his fate is not expected, either. If Mastorakis had left out the last ten minutes of this film, he would have had a minor classic. Throwing in a bickering honeymoon couple added nothing to the film. The climactic showdown feels padded and does not work on any level. The wind effects are good, the gore works for what little of it there is, and Mastorakis' direction at times reminded me of European horror masters Soavi or Argento. Hans Zimmer adds a good musical score. If he had left well enough alone, I would have been thrilled.

"The Wind" blows itself out, leaving me disappointed. Stop the film after eighty minutes, and be happy. Continue it, and you'll agree with me.

Stats:
(1986) 92 min. (* * *) out of five stars
-Directed by Nico Mastorakis
-Screenplay by Nico Mastorakis, Fred Perry, Story by Nico Mastorakis
-Cast: Meg Foster, Wings Hauser, David McCallum, Robert Morley, Steve Railsback, Mihalis Giannatos, Summer Thomas, John Michaels, Tracy Young, Dina Giannakou
(Not Rated)