Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 30, 1993 TAG: 9310300320
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After that, she and her sister weren't allowed to go to the movies.
Keep that in mind when you watch NBC's scary "House of Secrets" (Monday night at 9 on WSLS-Channel 10). It's probably not a movie you'd want your children to watch. If they do, they might become actors. Horrors.
The story is based on the fine 1955 French film "Diabolique," which has run several times during the pre-Halloween weeks on Bravo cable channel.
This time the story is set in New Orleans at a sanitorium owned by heiress Marion Ravenel (Melissa Gilbert). The sanitorium was established by her father in the family's ancestral mansion.
But Marion's abusive husband, Frank (Bruce Boxleitner), plans to sell the property to a developer who wants to make it into a casino. And he will evict longtime family retainer Evangeline (Cicely Tyson), who reminds him that the Ravenels had promised she could live out her life there.
The story takes place in the sanitorium, in the nearby bayous, at the annual Mardi Gras celebration and at one of New Orleans' famous above-ground cemeteries. Unaware that visitors are warned against walking in that burial place, Tyson decided during the making of the film to go there and seek out the tomb of Marie LeVeau, known as voodoo queen of New Orleans.
Tyson's interest in Marie LeVeau is understandable, given that her character practices a bit of voodoo in the film on behalf of the story's fragile heroine.
"I learned a lot about voodoo in the process of research when I did the film," said Tyson. "That's a fringe benefit of acting. I expand as a person in the process, and I always try to do that when I attack a role."
Tyson said she spoke by phone with two voodoo priestesses, but chose not to meet either of them "because I didn't want to be influenced" in her portrayal of Evangeline.
"I was quite intrigued that after prayers are finished (during a voodoo ceremony), the drums begin to beat to a kind of rhythm that's appropriate. I was quite taken with that, and I began to understand an African kinship, especially with Haitian voodooism. I know that in a particular ritual an animal has to be sacrificed, and that there's a candle and a bell, and that you have to quench the spirits' thirst, invite them into a place of beauty-hence, the flowers (in the film sequence) - and to bring the spirit to a place it likes."
The movie also features Kate Vernon as the sanitorium's physical therapist and Frank Ravenel's mistress, and Michael Boatman as Sgt. Joe DuBois, who investigates some very strange events.
Tyson said during the movie's filming, she grew fond of Gilbert - "I like her very much," she said. Apparently someone else did as well: Gilbert and Boxleitner are now planning to be married, according to an NBC publicist.
Tyson has appeared in more than 22 television productions, but she is perhaps best remembered for "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman." In that 1974 movie Tyson played a 110-year-old woman whose life stretched from the Civil War and slavery to the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.
"It was one of those brilliant experiences," she said. "I don't know if I would have attempted something like that today. I was so naive. I was paralyzed for days after I got the part. I suddenly realized the consequences of getting your desires. So I told myself, `It's yours, and you'd better do something about it.' "
She did, and turned in an acting tour de force. The television movie won nine Emmys, two of them for Tyson.
by CNB