Review of Sweet Sound of Death

Gene Michael Stover (gene@acm.org)

created Saturday, 2022 May 14

original at https://cybertiggyr.com/tpy75.html

Context

Review

It's a ghost story about a young couple in lust, though they would claim to be in love.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen the same plot on Night Gallery, maybe on Sixth Sense, & probably at least one movie from the 1970s, though I cannot pinpoint any of them at this time.

Except for taking place in 1965, it could have been written by Edgar A. Poe. I suppose it might be classified as Gothic fiction (the old kind of Gothic, circa 1800) due to its slow burn, but seems too elegant, too straightforward to be true Gothic. (Besides that, I don't give a damn. It is what it is.)

The main twist is predictable, therefor fails as a twist, but a couple little details hung off that main twist were unexpected.

There are no gore or jump scares.

Anyway, it's a ghost story from 1965, & I liked it.

Spoilers. Some thoughts about it.

Here be spoilers. Here be spoilers. Here be spoilers. Here be spoilers. Here be spoilers.

I don't know what the “Sound” from the English title indicates within the movie. Claudia's voice? The background music (which I enjoyed)? An English translation of the Spanish title is “The call”, so maybe it is one of the phone calls, such as the first one from Claudia after the wreck, after she is presumably dead?

From the funeral scene, we learn that Professor Urrutia cannot see dead Claudia. By extension, few people can see dead Claudia. Maybe only Pablo, other ghosts, & we viewers can see dead Claudia.

In addition, after the airplane crash, no one but us ever sees Pablo talking to Claudia. No one even sees him “talking to himself”, as they might view the conversation since they can't see dead Claudia. From this, one interpretation is that dead Claudia was in Pablo's head. He imagined it all & eventually broke into her tomb, opened her casket, lay down next to her body, & held her hand.

We assume he's dead, but we don't know that for sure. He might be sleeping, happily dreaming.

This would mean that he imagined Claudia's dead relatives as well. We know that Pablo didn't visit Claudia's living relatives, maybe imagine that they were dead, because the groundskeeper tells Professor Urrutia that the place is uninhabited.

I count three interpretations...

1. Pablo's interpretation: Claudia & her relatives are ghosts. They invited him to join them in their ghostly world, & he agreed. (Maybe it's a peaceful area of the Beetlejuice world.)
2. pessimistic viewer's interpretation: Claudia & her family are ghosts. They seduced Pablo into joining them, which killed him.
3. Professor Urrutia's interpretation: Pablo's grief over Claudia's death was so intense that he hallucinated, eventually entered her tomb to be with her.

Because the third interpretation requires Pablo to have imagined Claudia's relatives, also imagine that they are ghosts, I find that interpretation unlikely. (Professor Urrutia doesn't know that Pablo spoke with Claudia's relatives.)

My initial interpretation was the second one, but I like the first interpretation best.

We don't know for certain that Pablo is dead, so each of those three interpretations has two flavors. In other words, there one could claim that there are six interpretations.

Q. Which interpretation do you believe is the true interpretation, Gene?

A. There isn't a true interpretation.

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