The Fantasist (1986) User Reviews

"An imaginative rock. That's what I want."

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 20 March 2017]

It took filmmaker Robin Hardy over a dozen years to follow up his well loved cult flick "The Wicker Man". And judging by the results here, one might be inclined to think that he turned out to be a one-trick pony. Adapting the novel "Goosefoot", he spins the yarn of young Patricia Teeling (Moira Harris, a.k.a. Mrs. Gary Sinise), a simple Irish country lass who moves away from the family farm to work as a teacher in Dublin. She is aggressively romanced by American expatriate author Danny Sullivan (Timothy Bottoms, "The Last Picture Show", "The Paper Chase"). Meanwhile, a serial killer who clearly loves to hear themselves talk is phoning unfortunate young women, then murdering them.

"The Fantasist" is ultimately hurt by being overly silly and incredibly trite. It's set up way too obviously to create much suspense, or derive much pleasure from it. Also, Danny's attempts to be quirky and charming just come off as goofy a lot of the time. Bottoms is clearly having fun with this character, but Danny's shtick wears out its welcome early on. The story is plodding and doesn't offer much interest, but at least the distinctive Irish flavor helps to keep it watchable, along with decent work by Ms. Sinise, who's reasonably appealing. Christopher Cazenove ("Eye of the Needle", "A Knight's Tale") is pretty good as the inspector working the case, and the supporting cast (including John Kavanagh as Patricia's co-worker Robert Foxley and Mick Lally as the hearty Uncle Lar) is solid. Effective location shooting and the music by Stanislas Syrewicz further assist in making this as watchable as it is.

For those interested, Ms. Sinise does do some nudity late in the film.

Five out of 10.

The Auld Sod Has Literary Slashers.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 7 February 2011]

Moira Harris is a country girl who moves to the corrupted urban pit called Dublin. She has a teaching job but we don't see much of it. Her main interest seems to be in finding a suitable mate.

She doesn't have much luck. The first man who asks her out on a date is a queer duck. It's her Headmaster of English. He's older than she is and he ought to be stable, if a bit boring, but instead he gargles his wine while tasting it at a fancy restaurant, then, when he drives her home, asks if he can rub her tummy before she goes in. The habit traces back to his mother. ("I was lucky. She died when I was ten, before I could outgrow her.") So much for Robert the Headmaster.

Then she meets a visiting American writer in a neighboring apartment, Timothy Bottoms. He's charming at first, one of those Yanks with a sentimental attachment to the land of his ancestors. But, if anything, he's more screwed up than the Headmaster. He pulls childish stunts like telling her to hide a coin in her underwear and letting him dowse for it. The charm quickly morphs into rage when he thinks he's been mistreated. Finally he blows his cork entirely, calls her all sorts of filthy names, and throws her into a thicket. So much for Danny Sullivan.

But through all this, by means of a curious set of circumstances, she has met a police inspector who limps. Somebody has been calling the young girls of Dublin and whispering dirty nothings into their ears. Not VERY dirty. Not vulgar really, but insinuating, with an occasional physiological trope like Mallarme. "I envy the slab of pavement that bears the imprint of your foot." THEIR slashers are more pretentious than ours. Some of his listeners, he tracks down and stabs to death, leaving their naked bodies in an odd posture. One of the victims happens to be a neighbor of Moira Harris, and she's taken by the polite but rather intense police inspector who interrogates her, played by my erstwhile co-star, Christopher Cazenove. "Oh, Inspector," she gushes to herself, "your breath doesn't smell like pipe tobacco but like basil." Harris has an unanticipated encounter with the Dublin slasher, after which, instead of running to the nearest police station, she takes the ferry for England so that the utterly absurd climax can take place in the Irish Sea and the perp can fall screaming into the icy water, leaving Harris behind, holding a piece of him in her arms.

Just a few impressions. One is that there is nudity and cursing going on here and even simulated coitus, which tells me that there must have been big changes in Irish cinema since I was last in a Dublin theater, watching an American movie from which the words d*** and h**** had been excised. Second, Moira Harris has large expressive features that can turn in a twinkling from joy to fright with only a minimal muscular rearrangement. She has one of those rolling walks too, of the kind that used to be attributed to sailors. Lindsay Crouse and Lee Remick had it too. She's quite attractive without being stunningly beautiful. The script by Robin Hardy is commercial trash combining sex, violence, and romance. The best performance is that of Mick Lally as Uncle Lar. His impression of a drunken guy peeling a boiled potato is peerless. And Hitchcock would have appreciated the stomach-churning story he tells during the act.

This is one of those rare movies that should have just dropped the sex and violence and concentrated on the characters. Instead it looks like a poor imitation of an already exhausted American genre movie.

Take "The Fantasist" Quiz

[lazarillo · 19 September 2004]

1. If you are filming a movie in scenic Ireland, your lead should be: a).a famous American actress, b). an unknown Irish actress, c).an unknown American actress who is incapable of maintaining a convincing Irish accent.

2. When your villain, "the Phone Call Killer", telephones his victims he should: a). speak in a eerie, sinister voice, b). not speak at all but only breathe heavily, c).talk like Kelsey Grammar's character "Sideshow Bob" on "The Simpsons".

3. If you are making a murder mystery, you should have: a).a multitude of possible suspects, b). only two possible suspects, c).only two suspects, one of whom is such a ridiculously over-the-top red herring that he couldn't possibly turn out to be the killer.

4. At the climax of the movie the villain should: a). stalk the heroine with a big knife, b). chase the heroine with a giant axe, c).use the heroine's bare ass for his own personal set of bongos.

5. If you are director Robin Hardy and you have directed the cult horror classic "The Wicker Man" you should follow it up with: a).another cult horror classic, b). a lesser--but not completely embarrassing--effort, c)."The Fantasist"

Only a fantasist would consider this great cinema

[Ali_John_Catterall · 1/10 · 15 November 2009]

Director Robin Hardy's reputation rests almost exclusively on his 1973 cult classic, The Wicker Man. On the evidence of this, there it should stay. Wicker fans whose curiosity has been pricked should step quickly over The Fantasist as if it were a polystyrene pebble, for it holds no weight and will do them no good.

Overgrown Catholic schoolgirl Patricia Teeling (Harris) takes on a teaching post in Dublin, against the misgivings of her suburban relatives. "We don't want you picking up their city ways up there!" Her vocation coincides with a series of murders, perpetrated on young women by a nuisance caller with an especially mellifluous delivery, and who possibly supplements his income penning homilies for Hallmark greeting cards. "I'm the light in your jade green eyes where the sun bursts through and turns our stone grey city into gold. I am the melting feeling in your tummy when you hear music so sublimely beautiful you want to cry." If his poetry (which makes the average Vogon's efforts seem like TS Eliot) doesn't polish them off, the old knife-between-the-shoulder-blades trick certainly will.

"The man of my dreams is an imaginative rock," Patricia tells her flatmate, and soon attracts three unsuitable suitors, one of whom might be the killer. Could it be beardy weirdy English master Robert Foxley (Kavanagh)? He gargles wine loudly in restaurants. Plus, he's got a silly beard. In fact, he looks just like one of those upside-down faces in optical illusion books. And his romantic small talk consists of stuff like "I knew you'd make a good mother, Patricia." That's not good.

Love interest number two is her downstairs neighbour, the nervy American writer Danny Sullivan (Bottoms). He's married, so he's not a great catch. He also does a neat line in dirty phone calls in funny voices (to his wife, he claims). Then again, his wife is shortly bound for the chop. However, this doesn't stop our Pat hiding coins down her knickers so he can divine them with his rod (no euphemism intended). "I guess I just trust him," this latter-day Little Red Riding Hood tells suitor number three, Christopher Cazenove's Inspector McMyler, who keeps blown-up photos of the victims in his cottage, and wants to photograph Pat in the nude. Casual viewers will have figured out by now that Patty isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

This is a very silly film indeed; featuring grating overacting and a grating 1980s soundtrack, all tourist board Gaelic flutes and stabbing synths. Level 42 even make a cameo appearance performing the cheesiest white-funk since... well, Level 42 really are in a class of their own.

Lacking a playwright of Anthony Shaffer's stature, the dialogue's in dire need of an editor (sample line: "Death tries its best to rival procrastination as a thief of time"). The cinematography's functional at best, while scenes cutting between the slaughter of a victim and the carving of a roast merely underscore the clunkiness.

Most depressingly (in Hardy's hands) the film also panders to Vatican-friendly genre cliché, with Patricia's potential fate prompted through her burgeoning sexual liberation. Contrast this with the subversive Wicker Man, in which sex is portrayed as a guilt-free, joyous affair through which the protagonist could have saved himself, if only he'd actually had it.

Here, the one fleetingly erotic scene is deftly undermined by the killer merrily using Patricia's bare buttocks as a pair of bongos. What a symphony he could have produced with Willow MacGregor, the landlord's daughter in The Wicker Man!

Has nothing on The Wicker Man! (or entertaining films in general)

[The_Void · 3/10 · 30 March 2008]

I saw this movie for one reason and one reason only and, probably like everyone else who has seen it, that reason is because the film is directed by Robin Hardy; the man behind the all-time cult classic 'The Wicker Man'. I honestly have no idea how a man behind such a great film as The Wicker Man could end up directing something as crap as this. The Fantasist does not have a very good reputation, and that's hardly surprising as this film is completely boring. It was thirteen years between the release of this film and Robin Hardy's classic, but I actually believe that shooting for The Fantasist began in 1974, only production was slow as the cast and crew kept on falling asleep during shooting! The film takes place in Ireland and follows an Irish woman who moves to Dublin. It's not long before she begins receiving obscene phone calls from a stranger, and (coincidently?) there also happens to be a killer on the loose known as 'The Phone Call Killer'. Most people in that situation would change their phone number, but our heroine is drawn to the mystery caller instead...

The film starts off slowly but any hopes of it getting better are quickly dashed when it becomes quite clear that the pace is never going to pick up. This movie will grind you down; such is the sheer boredom on display. The film could be termed a slasher since people get sliced and diced, but it seems that Robin Hardy wanted it to be a bit more than just a slasher, and it's backfired horribly as there is no interest created around the central premise which absolutely kills it. Robin Hardy also had no luck in the casting department either as American actress Moira Harris fails to convince or generate any sympathy from the audience. The Wicker Man was a largely aesthetic affair with the picturesque island featuring strongly as well as the standout ending; but there's nothing like that here; all the locations are dreary and drab and that adds to the intense torture that is The Fantasist. Hardy probably wanted the movie to be a bit steamy and while there are brief flashes of nudity, the film certainly isn't sexy (though a sequence that sees the killer undress a girl with his knife is one of the few memorable moments). It all boils down to a stupid and predictable ending and overall, I would not recommend this rubbish even to hardcore fans of The Wicker Man.

is to the slasher what Wicker Man is to folk horror, sort of

[FieCrier · 3/10 · 30 January 2024]

...in that both are surprising takes on their respective subgenres, but whereas The Wicker Man is a pleasure The Fantasist is largely a dud. Despite a shorter running time, it feels like the longer of the two. Nonetheless, a somewhat interesting attempt.

The men whom the lead Patricia meets in Dublin, while spending an experimental year teaching away from her uncle's farm that she's been picked to inherit, are all exceptionally childishly perverse in their own ways. It's unclear why she would give any of them a minute of her time, except that she herself might be "The Fantasist" of the title - not the killer, but out of touch with reality in her own right.

She enjoys making up stories to tell men in bars. Her story delivered to her virgin prospective roommate of having had a single sexual relationship with a man in college that was unsatisfying could likewise be complete invention. Patricia also says she wants a man who is an "imaginative rock," who is "inscrutable." That, at least, might be more on the mark.

The freeze-frame ending leaves some questions. One wonders if Patrick McGinley's novel Goosefoot is as open.

Interesting plot twists...

[TheEdge76 · 8/10 · 2 May 1999]

I just finished watching this movie this weekend for the second time, having seen it on TV about six years ago. And it was just as good as I remembered it to be. The plot twists are very very clever, enough to keep you guessing to the end. My g/f commented that it was a bit slow to get started, but once we got into it, she was guessing who the culprit was all the way through.

One other thing - the scenery shown of Ireland is absolutely gorgeous.

One piece of weird cinema from 1986!

[jessica-147 · 12 May 2004]

Even though it was made in 1986, I had never saw this film before. To describe it as a horror film would be wrong, even though I watched it on the UK Horror Channel. It's more of a tales of the unexpected.

The film starts off fairly incomprehensible, when the central character of Patricia Teeling, a 25-year-old, moves house and basically does her thing. She then starts flirting with two guys, one a man in his mid 40s, the other, slightly younger at around 35, who's an American. The story is rather stodgy, and takes some time to get going but it transpires there is a killer on the loose. And Patricia suspects the American guy. <SPOILER> dont't read on if you want to see the film without reading this...

The killer is in fact the 40-year-old detective played by Christopher Cazenove. Toward the end of the movie, Patricia goes to Christopher who has a bad, stiff leg. She has coffee, then the detective asks her to see something. He lets her into a small room, whereupon he locks the door and tells her to undress so he can take "artistic" photographs of her. He has pictures of Patricia plastered all over the walls of the room, and so the detective is a murderer and a stalker.

And here comes the twist. For although it looks like Patricia might be raped, and SHE LOOKS SCARED INITIALLY, the movie takes an unexpected turn. As Christopher begins tapping the bare buttocks of Patricia, she is turned on by this, and it's a remarkably realistic piece of cinema as Patricia really looks all hot and bothered and sexual. Suddenly, she grabs Christopher's finger and sucks it passionately. They then make love willingly with the clock showing how long they're in bed. If you watch the film, you would never imagine this happening as Patricia is a virgin and would never contemplate sex with a guy she knew never mind a pervy detective. This reveals something in Patricia's character which is something akin to the pervy detective.

Like I say, it was a very expected turn to the film, and the end follows swiftly. You need to watch it!

Wicker Man goes to Ireland and comes back disappointed

[mackecm2 · 12 May 2004]

I stumbled across this relatively obscure film on a satellite channel the other day, and was eagerly anticipating an enjoyable experience, having been a big fan of director Robin Hardy's previous film (the Wicker Man).

95 minutes later, I was disappointed, although the film does have some redeeming features.

I consider The Wicker Man to be a classic of its type, and certain aspects of that film are carried over into this one - the haunting music, the atmospheric locations, and especially the suppressed eroticism. Also the final twist at the end. But having said that, this film does come across as a pale imitation of its predecessor.

Due to the appalling treatment that was meted out to The Wicker Man by the film industry powers, Robin Hardy retired from the business for over 10 years, and boy does it show here. Some of the editing is appallingly choppy, the characters' dialog is at times incredibly trite, and some of the scenes just don't gel. Examples of the latter are the initial murder, where the victim appears to offer no resistance to the knife wielding assailant, and the relationship between Moira Harris and Timothy Bottoms, which in one scene has her berating him for making pervy phone calls to his wife. then in next scene she discovers his wife's murdered body, and in the very next scene has her defending him aginst police suspicion? Duh???

Another scene that is particularly laughable is the night club scene where Harris and Bottoms meet. The moment when Timothy Bottoms raises his fists to the Mr. Halitosis character almost had me laughing out loud.

Moreover, there is virtually no mystery as to who the main pervy phone caller is, as the voice is easily identifiable as one of the main characters in the film.

However, it's not all bad news. As in The Wicker Man, there is an air of Catholic sexual repression which pervades the whole story, and is handled on the whole very well. I'm not Irish or Catholic, but I found it believable and not just because it gave the film an excuse to show a few bare breasts.

It's just a shame there couldn't have been a bit more suspense to go with it.

Enjoyable and quite unique

[analoguebubblebath · 22 September 2003]

Although nowhere near as good as "The Wicker Man", Robin Hardy has made a good stab at penetrating the Irish slasher genre

An interesting plot with some oddball characterisation and great scenery. The Dublin shots bring back memories of a pre-Tiger city. A motley crew of familiar and somewhat unpleasant actors [especially Ronan Wilmot and Jim Bartley] add to the frenetic atmosphere.

Definitely worth 95 mins of your time.

7/10

LET'S GET FREAKY IN IRELAND!

[monstermonkeyhead · 28 December 2003]

The plot jumps around a bit so you really don't understand the connections between various characters, and the movie is quite illogical at times. However, there are enough freaky moments to make this worth viewing. "What the Hell?!" popped into my mind many times- in a pleasurable way. The dialogue is great as well. If you want an interesting experience, bear with this VERY odd one.

What a bore!

[gridoon · 1 September 1999]

This film is supposed to be a thriller, but for more than an hour it's EXCRUCIATINGLY boring, despite the beautiful locations. Things become slightly more interesting in the final 10 minutes, which have a peculiar kinkiness. But the ending on the ship is typical slasher stuff.