Baffled! (1971) – Review

This early 70s offering finds the legendary Leonard Nimoy taking a sharp detour from the logical world of Mr. Spock into the misty realm of ESP, supernatural visions, and swinging ’70s mysticism. I give you the startling, strange movie Baffled!

We are first introduced to suave American race car driver Tom Kovack (Leonard Nimoy) whose life takes a dramatic turn when he experiences a terrifying and vivid psychic vision in the middle of a race – these inopportune visions send him off the track and into after a near-fatal crash – but instead of dying all this does is send him on a new career path. Enter Michelle Brent (Susan Hampshire), an elegant British occult expert who has been researching psychic phenomena, and after hearing about Tom’s incident, she tries to convince him that what he saw was a real psychic message, not just a hallucination. At first skeptical and resistant, Tom dismisses her talk of ESP and second sight, wanting no part in what he calls “mumbo jumbo.” However, the visions persist—vivid, disturbing, and impossible to ignore, such as a second vision involving a dark manor house and him falling backwards off a balcony and into the sea.

 

“You can’t die in a vision, right?”

Their journey leads them to Wyndham, an elegant yet eerie country estate in Devon, England, which has recently been turned into a holiday retreat. Tom and Michele arrive under the guise of tourists seeking accommodations, and it becomes apparent that something is not right. Tom begins to recognize objects and people from his visions, such as well-known actress Andrea Glenn (Vera Miles) and her young daughter Jennifer (Jewel Blanch), who have come to England on the behest of Andrea’s ex-husband but who remains surprisingly absent after their arrival. Other guests include wheelchair bound Louise Sanford (Valerie Taylor), who claims to be Andrea’s husband’s cousin; an Italian architect named Verelli (Christopher Benjamin); and a young couple, George and Peggy Tracewell (Ray Brooks and Angharad Rees). There is also the prerequisite mysterious housekeeper, Mrs. Farraday (Rachel Roberts), who seems kind and helpful at first, but it soon becomes apparent that she has a sinister agenda.

 

“Mrs. Danvers has nothing on me.”

Things quickly take a turn for the worse for poor Andrea, incapacitated by poison and bedridden, but to make matters worse, Jennifer begins to exhibit strange behaviour, appearing to age rapidly and displaying a rebellious attitude, not to mention acting decidedly creepy. Despite Kovack’s ability to sense an undercurrent of danger, he is almost murdered, Michelle just nearly escapes an abduction – I certainly hate when your psychic visions aren’t clear enough to help – but as these visions continue and become more disturbing, he and Michelle begin to piece together a chilling truth: a malevolent force is at work at Wyndham. Cue Kovack brooding over strange visions, uttering cryptic warnings, and looking perpetually confused—but still cool, because, well, he’s Leonard Nimoy. 

 

“Fascinating.”

As is required in a mystery, the other guests at Wyndham all act suspicious, as if they had all stepped out of the game Clue, but as the mystery deepens and Tom’s relationship with Michelle grows, the two rely on each other to navigate both the supernatural forces and the tangled human motives surrounding them, discovering that someone in Andrea’s past had been a dabbler in witchcraft and the occult. As the movie races to its conclusion, Tom and Michelle dash through secret passageways, escape being trapped in an elevator shaft, and eventually uncover the evil mastermind and save both Andrea and Jennifer. It turns out a certain someone was a practising occultist, using ancient rites to try and harness Jennifer’s psychic sensitivity for their nefarious purposes. There is a struggle, and let’s just say, things do not go well for the occultist.

 

He does make a big splash.

Stray Observations:

• One of the most far-fetched elements of this movie is that a professional race car driver would admit to the public that he crashed because he had a strange vision.
• The groovy, funky ‘70s TV music makes you think you’re watching Columbo: Psychic Edition. It’s trying so hard to be cool and spooky at the same time.
• Nimoy’s turtlenecks are doing so much work in this film. Meanwhile, Susan Hampshire wears an endless array of capes and scarves like she walked straight out of a Carnaby Street séance.
• Jennifer secretly meets with a man who claims to be her father, but he insists that she tell no one about him. Did they not have “stranger danger” teachings in the 70s?
• Tom finally accepts his powers and teams up with Michelle for more psychic sleuthing. The vibe is full-on “monster-of-the-week” potential—but alas, this was the beginning and the end.

 

“Next week, on Baffled! Oh, sorry, we’re cancelled.”

Directed by Philip Leacock and written by Theodore Apstein, the film plays like The X-Files by way of Dark Shadows but with less polish and a lot more bell-bottoms. It’s all mood and menace, with fog, candles, and the occasional evil child. The plot wobbles between intrigue and absurdity, occasionally tiptoeing into unintentional comedy—especially when Nimoy delivers deadly serious lines about psychic vibrations with the same gravitas he gave to warp drive mechanics. There’s also the fact that the movie screams early-’70s TV pilot—and that’s because it was one. It was meant to launch a series about a psychic duo solving mysteries, but alas, the show never took off. That said, Baffled! is still an entertaining curiosity. Think Scooby-Doo if Daphne had a PhD and Shaggy had telepathy (and drove a Jaguar E-Type).

 

“It looks like we’ve got ourselves a mystery to solve.”

While it was made as a television pilot, the production values are fairly solid for the time, and Leonard Nimoy brings a charismatic, rugged charm to his role—a stark contrast from his usual typecasting as Spock. Nimoy was clearly enjoying himself here as he leaned into the skeptical-tough-guy-with-a-heart role. It’s weird seeing him so loose after his buttoned-up Vulcan days, but it works in a 70s TV movie kind of way. The chemistry between Nimoy and Hampshire helps carry the film, even when the plot edges into campy or melodramatic territory. The eerie manor and gothic-lite atmosphere also give off cozy supernatural vibes, and the whole thing comes across like a paranormal Columbo episode dipped in weirdness. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Note: The use of terrible rear projection plagues this movie.

As for Kovack’s psychic visions, they are… not exactly chilling. More like, “Mildly unsettling dream sequences brought to you by Vaseline-smeared lenses.” And despite the hokey moments (and there are plenty), there’s an undeniable charm here. Nimoy, always a compelling screen presence, brings enough gravitas to ground the goofy premise. Hampshire adds a touch of class, and the chemistry between the two suggests the potential for a fun “occult detective” series that, sadly, never got off the ground. Of course, the biggest issue one will have with this offering is that it’s very much a “pilot that didn’t get picked up,” so it leaves you hanging.

 

It does have some decidedly creepy moments.

In conclusion, while Baffled! did not lead to a full TV series, as originally intended, it has gained a small cult following over the years thanks to Nimoy’s unique performance and its curious blend of psychic detective work and supernatural mystery. Today, it’s often viewed as a fascinating relic of 1970s genre experimentation—a little bit Columbo, a little bit The Omen, with a dash of Scooby-Doo charm.