The Wind (1986)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Absolutely Fantastic

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

"The Wind" or it's much better title which I viewed it under "The Edge Of Terror" is an OK movie, although I was lured by the DVD'S interesting artwork, which made this movie look like a body count, but it's not although there are some deaths, 3 in fact but they aren't anything special very bloodless and quite limp.The storyline is quite interesting where we get a novelist named Sian Anderson leaves her L.A. pad to travel to a remote Greek island to write her new book, unaware that her fellow neighbour and handyman is about to snap and begin a murder spree. Although this movie picks up a decent pace, it's just the so called wind wasn't as dramatic as it should have been, and despite the decent enough pace this movie still tends to drag in places like before the climax and although the chase scenes are pretty good it just wasn't tense enough for my taste and some of the moments that should have been shocking just wasn't horrific enough.Well there is a lot to like about this movie firstly the cast are interesting namely Meg Foster who plays the lead character, a very underrated actress who should be more well known and she does a great job here and carries the movie on her shoulders effortlessly and Robert Morley was quite fun as the pompus landlord and Wings Hauser as the maniac did okay, but not quite menacing enough though but he did pretty good.All in all "The Edge Of Terror" is pretty tame thriller with some decent moments but not enough to shine, and the pointless scenes that are just there to pad out the running time, like when the honeymoon couple show up stranded, they should have got murdered, now that would have been a great climax, so not a bad film by any means, just don't expect a full on slasher movie or you will be disappointed.

My wife was somehow convinced during this film that Meg Foster is a post-op transvestite. Not sure why though. Meg's a cheesy novel writer headed off to Greek island to indulge in her muse and perhaps eat kebabs and such like, but when she gets there her eccentric landlord (played by 140 year old Robert Morley) warns her to beware of the wind and also informs her that the housekeeper is a loser. He's right on both counts, because the wind never lets up for the entire film, and his housekeeper is a loser, because he's played by cheeseball actor Wings Hauser!I'm just joking, we all love Wings in our house. He was great in Mutant (a film I like but everyone else in the world hates) and Nightmare at Noon (also known as 'Mutant again under a different name'). Here, he's the evilly named Phil, and turns up at Meg's new house all a-grinning and crazed right from the get go. Inspired, Meg starts writing a story in which she imagines Wings braining Robert Morley with a poker, but then, it turns out, she sees Wings burying a body in a field. So is it all just in her imagination? Is Wings really a crazy goofy killer? Or is the wind something sinister and not something caused by eating too many kebabs?Director Niko Mastorakis takes time out from making Oliver Reed kiss men (Hired to Kill), forcing George Kennedy to shoot crazed citizens (Nightmare at Noon), and filming a guy giving a goat some up it's wrong un (Island of Death), to give a more sedate and moody film where Wings chases Meg Foster around in circles. It's all done Giallo style, and just like a giallo, there's plenty of raised questions and a head scratching ending. Edge of Terror isn't quite as crazy as Mastorakis' other films, but it's no slouch either. Although the film is bloodless and boobless, the Greek island scenery really helps conjure up words like 'isolated', 'atmospheric' and 'Wings-tastic'. Wings is the draw here for me, playing a guy who can't go for a second without going through some sort of mood swing. As Nietchze says: If you look into Wings Hauser long enough, Wings Hauser looks into you.

I picked this one up because the music was done by Hans Zimmer, a customer of Metasonix modular synths (made by someone dear to me). The jacket art says "the 2003 version".I give it one point for a strong female, one point for cheezy dialog and one last point for meg foster's light blue eyes, of which there are plenty of shots of.It was fun seeing David MacCullum casually swimming (the pool has a plexiglass viewing window!), while his lady love was being chased by a psycho in Greece. The sets were marginally impressive-that is, rich people's houses in L.A. and Mendanassos (sp?), where the castle was. I found myself wondering how they were able to keep up the cleaning with all the dust blowing around. The wind wasn't fierce enough to be believable to me. I kept thinking that the animal pelts on the furniture must be nasty...etc. and realized that the film must be pretty boring if i am wondering these things when the supposed plot was unfolding. I stumbled over things like why did she light a fire, blow out the match, then throw the match into the fire?! Dumb stuff like that. It was clunky at best. Oh well. Robert Morely got to have a bit of fun with his kooky geezer character and a nice vacation out of it.

Suspenseful, atmospheric thriller finds Meg Foster as a novelist who is stalked by Wings Hauser in a small, deserted foreign village during he middle of a really bad wind storm. Takes it time getting started, but worth the wait. The last third is especially exciting. Meg Foster is solid as usual, though Hauser goes over the top. Rated R; Violence and Profanity.