One of the child actors told me that he was disturbed by the film’s violence, and that he didn’t fully appreciate the filming experience until adulthood.Ī half-century after its release, The Other is frustratingly hard to locate and watch today, unless your local library carries a DVD copy. Some of them believed that it was a mistake to edit it as a horror film - that it wasn’t quite as immersive as the book. Still, The Other died at the box office, and Tryon - who wrote the screenplay and served as executive producer - was displeased, dismissing the film as “badly cut and faultily directed.” While making a YouTube video essay about the production of The Other, it was interesting to hear differing viewpoints from the film’s surviving cast and crew. The end result was arguably one of Mulligan’s best and most thought-provoking films. Nicholas Brown, ruthlessly cut the film down, until what lingered the most about the final cut were the gruesome details. However, test screenings yielded complaints from audiences that the film was too slow, so Mulligan and his editor, O. A popular book becomes a flop at the box officeĭirector Robert Mulligan, who also directed 1962’s To Kill A Mockingbird, initially set out to make a film with Hitchcockian suspense elements, and Tryon’s story gave Mulligan the tools to make both a moving and suspenseful picture about a loving yet troubled rural family.

The film ends up being terrifying not for the evil imagery, but for the creeping realization that, underneath the sunshine and superficial pleasures, something darker is brewing - maybe it was there all along. Like nostalgia itself, it is a mistake to fully trust the perspectives of Niles and Holland. Concealed beneath the film’s heavenly fabric is an undercurrent of deadliness and danger. We listen to Jerry Goldsmith’s lovely score, as it romanticizes the beauty of the moment - and then, for some unexplained reason, the score starts hitting evil-sounding notes upon glancing at the sharp prongs of a nearby pitchfork.

The camera takes the perspective of the bird as it soars over Pequot Landing. In one of the most visually imaginative sequences of the movie, Niles plays “the game” to get inside the mind of a black bird perched on a fence.

The other tryon