Formerly called Jon Good's Wife (2001), by which title it sank into oblivion, after long delay this film was given a video release as The Red Right Hand, even though there are no red hands in the story. Sneaking into the marketplace under this new identity, it very quickly hit the deep-discount market.

It was obviously retitled because the first title was so lame. But the second is hardly any better, even though it permitted the dvd box to be given a demonic red claw viewers will wait to see in the film to no avail.

So, well, the film isn't as bad as the titles. Massachusetts, 1978, a young man, Alan (Michael Kevin Walker), has learned he's dying of the same cancer that took his dad. He's discouraged & depressed, but even so decides to go together with his wife (Megan Rawa) to a fifteen-year school reunion in their old home town.

An array of nervous characters are on their way to the same reunion: Roger (John Kuntz) the lonely gay guy; a black woman Martha (Kim Brockingham) who was once married to white Jake (John Doe) who is also to attend; & the dysfunctional team of Jon Good (Marc Ardito) & his wife Sara (Abigail Morgan).

Jon's an attorney & gambler. Sara's a paranoic nympho who seems to be the only one not directly connected to some mysterious incident. The others all have baggage & memories of this New England place. There's an unsolved mystery from their shared past regarding an absent friend, Calef (Jason Winther). He vanished fifteen years earlier, just after graduation.

Some of them begin to experience horrific visions, while John Good's wife asks uncomfortable questions about the secret incident. She seems potentially insane & is certainly a danger to the others whose most ardent desire is to let sleeping dogs lie.

After the overly curious nympho has what seems to be a psychotic break, she turns out to have the supernatural power of killing at a glance. She may actually be demonic, though her behavior skirts the unreal & the real, & it may all be madness interacting with guilt.

The truth about Caleb will prove appalling in itself, with intimations of dark sorceries that may have been only psychological. Although low budget, with an uneven & sometimes chaotic script that never makes clear sense, The Red Right Hand is nevertheless unusually sophisticated, relative to other horror cheapies from the seedy dvd distributor Asylum. It's all a bit like the adult version of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) if that film were recombinated with The Big Chill (1983).

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