The Haunting of Sarah Hardy

Sela Ward stars as beautiful, vulnerable heiress Sarah Hardy, recently wed and returning to her isolated childhood home, The Pines, to claim her vast inheritance. But something – or someone – evil waits there for her. It could be real. Or imagined. Whatever it is , it wants to drive Sarah into madness. And on the other side of madness lies murder. Featuring a tour de force performances by Morgan Fairchild and Polly Bergen, The Haunting of Sarah Hardy is sheer gothic suspense at its most wicked.

Mommie dearest, would you light the gas lamp? Directed by Jerry London and adapted to teleplay by Thomas Baum from the novel, The Crossing, written by Jim Flanagan. It stars Sela Ward, Michael Woods, Roscoe Born, Morgan Fairchild and Polly Bergen. After a troubled childhood that saw her father die and her mother go mad to the point of suicide, Sarah Hardy (Ward) blossoms into a beautiful woman and marries a handsome man. In spite of her close friends concerns, Sarah and her husband decide to move back to the family home of her childhood, The Pines. It's not long before strange occurrences begin to unnerve Sarah at The Pines. Is her mother not really dead, is it a ghost, or outside influences with ulterior motives? I genuinely feel bad pouring some scorn on this TV movie, because I so wanted to like it, to grasp a bit of freshness in what has become known as the Gaslight sub-genre of horror. Sadly it's just not very good. It's awash with soap opera operatics, some very poor acting, a confused tonal flow (am I mystery, horror, a message thriller?), an out of place porn movie jazz like musical score, and an ending that beggars belief. The mansion design is great, and there's some nice night time photography during the outer grounds sequences, but it's a difficult film to recommend to those after a good old fashioned mansion based spooker. 5/10