Movie review by Greg Goodsell
Bill and Janice Templeton (John Beck and Marsha Mason) are a wealthy New York City couple who live in their sumptuous apartment with their 13-year-old daughter Ivy (Susan Swift). Things are just great until a bearded stranger (Hannibal Lechter himself, Anthony Hopkins) begins shadowing Janice and Ivy at school and on the city streets. The man comes forward to the Templetons, says his name is Elliot Hoover, and in a roundabout way says that their Ivy is in fact the reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose who died along with her mother in a car wreck two minutes before Ivy's birth. In lieu of taking him out on the street and giving him a sound thrashing (macho actor John Beck was in Rollerball in 1975, after all), the seed of doubt is planted in the Templeton’s minds. Ivy has suffered from a series of night terrors from a very early age that have amazing fidelity to being burned alive in a car wreck. The reappearance of her former “father” only escalates Ivy’s convulsions, and slowly but surely Janice’s confidence in the rational begins to crack. The matter winds up in a courtroom – and it all ends rather badly for Ivy/Audrey.