Shadow Play

(Susan Shadburne, USA, 1986)

I have a special fondness for genre or exploitation films directed by women. It is a criminally under-studied area.

This atmospheric psychodrama by Susan Shadburne is an intriguing, if mostly unexciting, exploration of a woman (Dee Wallace Stone) facing the personal "ghosts" that arise from her art, her love life and her inner, unconfronted self.

Like many horror films made by women, it plumbs many motifs of the Female Gothic.

© Adrian Martin December 1992