Discovering V.C. Andrews: Part Two - Flowers in the Attic (1987) Film Review

In terms of a Gothic-psychological horror, this film visually achieve that – in terms of a book adaptation, characters or script, this film fails that.

Flowers in the Attic was definitely a controversial book, it highlighted abuse, rape and even incest in a very upper-class household and a very disturbed family. At one point Wes Craven was scheduled to direct the film and he even completed a screenplay draft. Producers were disturbed by his approach to the incest-laden story, however, and Jeffrey Bloom ended up with writing and directing duties.

This is where the film definitely failed, the screenplay had stripped bare the source material. Also the incorporation of Virginia Andrews’ dialogue - which works for a gothic horror novel, but doesn’t translate well for the screen where characters are in the 1960s. Then the dynamic of Christopher and Cathy lost any real sense of complexity and even came off as more inappropriate with the incestuous relationship cut out. The apparent conflicts with creative choices on production are clear when you watch this film, to the point where director Jeffrey Bloom even walked off set because he refused to film an alternative ending and most of his scenes that remained faithful to the source material were cut in post-production. I will say that the mansion they used for Foxworth Hall was impressive and had a real Gothic tone to it

Now, the casting - Louise Fletcher as the grandmother was probably the best casting and her portrayal as the formidable grandmother was well done. Victoria Tennant as the mother Corinne, may have looked the part but I didn’t buy into her transition into a much darker character - it seems she didn’t get as much into the role as Fletcher did in comparison.

The role of Cathy, the protagonist and narrator of Flowers was played by Kristy Swanson (also known as OG Buffy from the 90s) - who actually was a good casting, but her line delivery did come across forced at times. Jeb Stuart Adams as Christopher was definitely one of the weakest castings and his performance throughout was honestly flat - it was also distracting that I knew he was very close in age to Tennant and it showed, despite them playing mother and son. Another aspect of this film I was surprised by was the aging up of the characters, particularly Cathy and Chris. In the book, the kids are locked in the attic for three years and they follow this in the film - Cathy’s aged 12-15 and Chris is 14-17 in the timeline of the book, which made their reliance on Corinne and Olivia logical as they were minors. In this film version Cathy is 15-18 and Chris is 18-20 which made even less sense making them older because they were incredibly juvenile and lacked the common sense or maturity that older children and even young adults would have.

As much as I hate to say it, I really don’t have much thoughts on Ben Ryan Ganger and Lindsay Parker as Cory and Carrie - there really was no distinction between the characters, they were just there.

In my opinion, this is probably the weakest V.C. Andrews adaptation - due in largely to the fact that the production company took a controversial book and tried to tame it for commercial appeal, completely missing the mark on the book itself and why it had such a wide fanbase of readers.

My rating for this film is one and a half stars