A Taste of Evil 1971

Susan Wilcox Barbara Parkins is a young woman who carries the heavy burden of a brutal rape she endured at the age of 13. The trauma shattered her voice and left her with a long, silent wake of mental decline, ultimately landing her in a Swiss sanatorium for treatment. When she is finally allowed to leave, she returns to the family home only to confront a life that has grown tense and unstable. Her mother, Miriam Jennings Barbara Stanwyck, is clinging to a fragile marriage with Harold Jennings William Windom, an alcoholic husband whose volatility adds a dangerous layer to the house’s hollow domestic warmth. The atmosphere is thick with unease as Susan treks back to the woods where the assault occurred, certain that someone is tailing her, while Miriam insists that Harold was not in the house the night before.

One night, Susan notices a shadow by her window and soon discovers a dead man in her bathtub. She faints, only to awaken in the presence of Dr. Michael Lomas Roddy McDowall. There is no physical trace of a body, and Susan feels a creeping certainty that someone is trying to drive her insane. Miriam, ever pragmatic and anxious to protect the family’s stability, writes off Susan’s visions as symptoms of illness, casting doubt on the wisdom of releasing her from the hospital. The tension escalates when Susan is chased out of the mansion by a figure she believes to be Harold, and later she finds a dead body in a car outside, only for the vehicle to disappear when she seeks help from John Arthur O’Connell, an old family friend who also serves as the gardener. The sequence of strange episodes deepens the mystery, weaving a thread of suspicion around Harold and the house itself.

After confiding in Dr. Michael Lomas, he tries to interpret the events through a psychological lens, suggesting that Susan’s subconscious is pushing her away from Harold as the source of trauma. Yet Susan remains convinced that Harold was the man who raped her. The same day Harold returns to the mansion, someone from the woods calls out to Susan. She ventures into the forest and encounters the same dead man who grabs her leg, forcing her to flee and hide in the cabin where she was assaulted years earlier. Harold arrives soon after and is later found dead, apparently shot by Susan. The authorities inform Miriam that Susan will be returned to the Swiss sanatorium, but the plot twists reveal more than a simple medical verdict: Miriam confesses a lifelong jealousy of Susan, claiming that her father showered Susan with attention while neglecting her. In a shocking reversal, it is revealed that John is the one who raped Susan when she was young.

A shadowy stalker then targets Miriam, seemingly impersonating Harold. Believing John to be the ringleader of the terror, Miriam fires him, and the stalking continues without abating. In a climactic storm, Miriam glimpses the stalker who appears to be Harold, and John appears just in time to be shot by Miriam. She staggers toward the exit, only to find Harold standing in the doorway. In a moment of hysteria, she screams that she “made Susan kill” him, a line that exposes the tangled web of manipulation within the household. The people around Miriam—most notably Dr. Michael Lomas—are unmasked in a counter-conspiracy designed to control Susan’s fate. The reveal reframes the entire ordeal: Harold is alive, his apparent shooting a calculated ruse intended to coerce a confession from Miriam. With the truth laid bare, Miriam accepts the consequences and is led away, leaving a chilling portrait of deceit, jealousy, and psychological manipulation at the center of a family’s unraveling.