The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

Sometimes, when feelings of déjà vu extend beyond a fleeting moment, it’s enough to make a nonbeliever consider the possibilities of other, more metaphysical powers at play. During the rise of the New Age movement in the 1970s, there was an increased interest in exploring the age-old concepts of reincarnation and rebirth, and the movie rights to Max Ehrlich’s 1974 novel The Reincarnation of Peter Proud were snatched up before it even hit the shelves.

Ehrlich’s haunted protagonist, a California college professor embodied on-screen by the intriguingly angular Michael Sarrazin, is confronted with a startling recurrent dream that’s too vivid and true-to-life to ignore. In it, “he”—in the form of another man, played by Tony Stephano, the onetime model and infrequent actor best known for his appearance in 1982’s Tron—swims naked at night in a lake (called Crystal Lake: no relation!), where he is brutally struck with an oar by a woman in a rowboat (Margot Kidder) and drowns, his body sinking deep below the surface. It’s a creepily beautiful image; even creepier is Peter speaking aloud in his sleep in an unfamiliar voice, coarser than his own. “What am I, some kind of insane ventriloquist?” he laments at one point.

His doctor reckons that these nightmares are actually hallucinations, but the parapsychologist he’s referred to is stumped. In a sleep study, his dreams don’t register as dreams, though he is clearly seeing something as he sleeps. In his waking life, little things act as memory triggers—cars, statues, bridges, and other monuments—and when one night he catches sight of an eerily familiar place on TV, he traces it to some unknown destination in Massachusetts, even though he’s never been to New England. With his supportive yet skeptical girlfriend (Cornelia Sharpe) in tow, he sets out on a mad quest to pinpoint the exact locale.

Sarrazin is terrific as a man in limbo between his present and his past (life), and it’s some of Kidder’s finest work as the hard-drinking widow Peter recognizes as the murderer from his dreams. Some of the other supporting acting impresses less, with Sharpe, cursed with a string of clunky lines, perhaps coming off worst. But luckily, she departs from Peter and the film when she can’t tolerate his all-consuming mission a second longer.

When he does locate his potential “family” in Springfield (Ehrlich’s hometown), the film’s tone shifts and enters some questionable new Freudian territory, as Proud finds that he is attracted to his “daughter” (Jennifer O’Neill). And, hey, we all know history repeats itself, so what’s a man to do if a past life predisposes him to be a truly loathsome human? But beyond that ickiness, the film is an engaging slice of trippy psychological horror, with extremely tight work from director J. Lee Thompson, DP Victor J. Kemper, and editor Michael Anderson, who together created the hypnotic, highly effective montages that represent remembered moments from Peter’s possible prior existence. And composer Jerry Goldsmith’s hybrid orchestral and electronic score provides the perfect mystical complement.

Considering this talent alone, it’s hard to imagine why the film has remained under the radar for so long, though it has attracted some renewed interest, with the likes of David Fincher and Sean Durkin attached to prospective remakes at various times. 🩸