Teringer
An Exercise In Nonsense
TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
MartinHafer
The plot for "I Start Counting" sounds rather interesting when you read about it on IMDb: "A 14-year-old girl coming to terms with her sexuality, discovers that her adored older brother may be guilty of a series of bizarre sex crimes.". However this really isn't what the movie is all about and it also has a really creepy semi- incestuous and Electra Complex-like theme that put me off.Jenny Agutter plays Wynne--a 14 year-old. She was actually about 18 when she made the film. Wynne is really, really obsessed about her older step-brother...to the point where she has lots of incestuous thoughts. These are not in an of themselves THAT creepy...but he's more than twice her age and this brings the notion of pedophilia if he were to reciprocate. Either way, it's awfully weird and disturbing. As far as the step-brother killing women...well that's all a misunderstanding that Wynne develops and the film really is about her awakening sexual desires (such as her masturbating) and her misguided affections. Creepy and yet oddly boring in spite of all this and I had to really struggle to pay attention to all this. All in all, a waste of my time, though I guess technically it's well made.
yeodawg
Its not for the pomp and circumstance and hither thee will and stuff. It's because the dialog and characters are as rich as a velvet cake. From the opening scene I was engaged and entertained, the girls sparring with the priest was as exciting as any Bruce Willis Die-hard shoot-out, rappel off the top roof scene. Young blonde beautiful girls are turning up dead and everyone's a suspect. Not because they said something or did something suspicious. They're British men, effete, fops and dandy's they all look suspicious. They all have that longing for something more look on their face, even when they're rogering some tight bird. They still look like they want to be strangling her instead of having sex with her. Soanyhoo in between the knee-high cotton white socks, the mid-thigh schoolgirl outfits, the repressed guys in the woolly-pulleys, dealing with drug addiction, we sort out who's been killing the girls. At one point a hippie with a see through linen shirt and sunglasses to die-for, shows up at the house and peddles drugs to the son. The family is about to throw him out before he tells them the police interrogate end him about the dead girls. They become very curious, and putty in their hands.
HumanoidOfFlesh
A 14-year old Catholic girl Wynne(Jenny Agutter)falls in love with her older adoptive brother.Her crush is growing stronger as she believes that he is the local sex killer of young girls."I Start Counting" is a subtle exploitation film which touches several taboo subject matters including incest,drugs,rape and teenage sexuality.The story is fascinating and often confusing and the film is full of symbolism.The purity and innocence of Wynne slowly becomes corrupted.The girl believes she sees the statue of Jesus in church weeping blood.The climax of "I Start Counting" is very powerful and memorable.Along with "Night After Night After Night" a forgotten genre essential from late 60's.8 out of 10.
jon-34
I saw this film for the one and only time on English television back in 1980.At the time I thought it was the best thriller film I had ever seen.Since then to my knowledge it has never been shown again over here (I stand to be corrected on this one !) and appears to have sank without trace.Agutter is excellent as the schoolgirl who thinks her foster brother(Bryan Marshall) may be the local sex murderer and the creepy atmosphere builds up carefully helped by the location work on the wide windy stretches of an English New Town which I believe is Bracknell,Berkshire where Sean Connery's equally disturbing film "The Offence" was shot a couple of years later.Photography ,editing and supporting cast all first class.This film deserves to be better known in the history of British film and indeed the horror/thriller genre and its continued omission in most of the weighty film guides on the market remains ,to me, the biggest mystery and injustice of them all.
