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Anthony Perkins; Julie Harris; Joan Hackett; Molly Dodd
You're really tempting fate if you put "How Awful" in the title of your Movie of the Week, but How Awful About Allan is actually not awful, which lets legendary genre director Curtis Harrington (What's the Matter with Helen?, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?) off the hook but forces me to actually write a review more than 2 words.

Anthony Perkins is a bit of a bitch here as the titular Allan, who has lost most of his sight in a fire that killed his genius father and left his sister Katherine (Julie Harris of The Haunting) with a big ol' Silly Putty scar on her face. Allan is released from the convalescent home (still partly blind, which the doctors say is purely psychological and stems from Allan's guilt over his father's barbecueing) and goes home to live with Katherine, who now rents out a room to a boarder to help pay the bills. Katherine takes dutiful care of Allan despite the fact that he can hardly see (his POV's -- which are the movie's real selling point -- look like they're shot through a shower door, and likely were) and is a complete snatch to her most of the time, and neighbor Olive (Joan Hackett of The Last of Sheila), whom Allan was supposed to marry before the accident, does her best to help him get back to normal. The problem is, a dark figure is stalking Allan in the night -- quite creepy, given that he can only see shapes -- and he begins to think that either he is being haunted or that someone -- perhaps Katherine's ex-boyfriend -- is out to get him. Allan becomes obsessed with the tenant, a college student whom he has met but could not see, and he starts to think that he may be the key to his torment.

Things unfortunately fall apart a bit at the end, but the cat-and-mouse-through-a-frosted-windshield act is really delicious for a while. I wish that Allan had been a little nicer of a guy to start out with, but when you've got hot scenes of a blind man driving off in his ex-girlfriend's car in a panic and causing mass chaos in the streets, you kind of overlook his bad attitude. The ending is definitely of the WTF? variety, but for the most part it feels similar in tone to other parlor movies of the time (like The House that Would Not Die). Not the best, maybe, but still a lot of fun -- and Perkins and Harris make it easy to get through.