Yet she is unable to turn on him and keeps his secret, as long as he never plays the game again. The old woman now realizes that Niles has kept his brother alive in his mind and has been responsible for everything bad that has happened. Right before he died, Niles used the great game to talk to his dead brother, who commanded him to open his coffin, cut off his finger and take the ring. Here’s where the twist comes in - Holland has been dead since he fell down a well on their birthday last March. He lets her know that his brother has been evil all summer. He says that Holland gave it to him and the evil brother charhes his mother, knocking her down the stairs, rendering her paralyzed.Īfter the neighbor’s body is found, Ada finds Holland’s harmonica and asks Niles what happened. She demands that Niles tell her how he got it. The twins’ mother finally learns what is happening and finds the ring inside a tobacco tin, along with a human finger. This behavior only gets worse when Holland causes a neighbor (Portia Nelson, one of Tryon’s lifelong friends) to have a heart attack after he menaces her with a rat. The young boy jumps into it and is killed to the horror of Niles, who must now keep his brother’s secret. And to get revenge for Russell’s snitching, he hides a pitchfork inside a haystack. Their father’s brother George locks up the cellar, but Holland knows how to sneak in. Holland, the older of the two twins, says that the ring passes on to the oldest son, who can do whatever he wants with it. One day, they’re caught there by their cousin Rusell, who also sees that Niles is wearing the ring that was to be buried with his rather. The twins are pretty mischeivous, as they still play in the apple cellar where their father died. While the rest of the family goes about their daily lives, Niles grows closer to Ada (Uta Hagen, who may have only appeared in five films, but was an incredibly influential acting teacher and Broadway star), his Russian grandmother, who has introduced him to the great game, the Perry family’s secret gift of being able to project their mind into other beings. Their father died in an accident in the apple cellar last year and their mother remains so sad that she rarely leaves her room.

In the summer of 1935, identical twins Holland and Niles Perry live on their family farm, but all is not well. This is a movie that I’ve been wanting to see since reading about it in Paperbacks From Hell (writer Grady Hendrix - who created that book with Will Errickson - also wrote this great article all about Tryon), as Tryon is really the forgotten horror writer of the 1970’s.

This adaption of the Tom Tryon book was also scripted by the author, who was once an actor before suffering the abuse of Otto Preminger. He was more well-known for dramas like Summer of ’42 Same Time, Next Year and To Kill A Mockinbird. Robert Mulligan is a strange choice to direct a horror movie.

The other tom tryon