Review of Eggshells

Eggshells (1969)
10/10
I Guess Nobody Else Saw It
21 April 2006
When THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE came out I was eagerly looking forward to it because the director had made EGGSHELLS. My wife and I saw EGGSHELLS when we were living in Houston. I'd get off work at 10 at night, we'd go eat Mexican food, and then go to a midnight movie at the Alabama, Tower, or River Oaks theatres inside the loop. They were sponsored by KLOL 101.1 FM and the admission price was $1.01. As you can tell, this was before we had children. In fact, my wife was probably pregnant with our first (born July of 1974) when we saw this. We'd sit in the front row of the balcony because she was most comfortable with her feet propped up on the rail.

I only saw EGGSHELLS that one time, but it's stuck with me all these years. The plot is a little fuzzy to me, but I remember the title because one of the films themes was that our fellow humans are so fragile that we would handle them as if they were made of eggshells.

Although there were supernatural elements to it, this was nowhere near a horror movie. It was closer in mood to THE GRADUATE or YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW in that it was a coming of age story about young adults.

It was about undergraduates at the University of Texas in Austin. One character comes from a small town and this is her introduction to life in the big city. Several students share a large old house near the University (in a neighborhood I've always enjoyed driving through) and they discover that the house is haunted.

Beyond that plot details get fuzzy, although I do remember that there was a 'hippie wedding' that took place on the lawn of the capitol building.

It gets a ten because although it didn't have anybody famous in it (for years it wasn't even listed on the IMDb and I wondered if I'd imagined it, and I don't know if even Hooper has a print of it any more) and wasn't a techno marvel I could tell that it was made with a lot of love. Hooper was thrilled to have a camera at his disposal and use it to tell his story.

If this ever comes out on DVD I'll be first in line.
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