The Return of Madame Vernoy

"The Veil" (1958) is a 10-episode TV series hosted by none other than the great Horror icon Boris Karloff. Karloff narrates a (supposedly fact-based) mysterious story about the 'supernatural, which lies behind the veil' in each of the episodes, which, of course makes it highly interesting to my fellow fans of Classic Horror. The individual episodes are not all equally good, however. They are all entertaining, but while some episodes, such as "Jack The Ripper" (the last and best episode) are excellent and eerie, some others, such as this one, are merely cheesy fun. This lesser "The Veil" episode, "The Return Of Madame Vernoy" has the topic of re-incarnation. In 1927, Sita Vernoy, a young Indian woman, died, leaving behind her French husband and a son. Santha Naidu, a beautiful young woman born a year after Sita's death, in 1928, has remembered details from Sita's life from her early childhood... The reincarnation subject was an obvious subject for a show like "The Veil" which revolves around the paranormal. As far as I am concerned, they could have made a bit more of it, as this is clearly one of the least interesting episodes of the series. It is nonetheless entertaining however. Karloff himself plays a small role again. Trivia fans may also be interested to hear that actor George Hamilton played his first adult role in this episode. Overall, "The Return Of Madame Vernoy" is one of the lesser episodes of the series. Yet it is worth watching - Boris Karloff is always good enough a reason to watch something, and this will only take 25 minutes of your time.

It is an obvious good intentioned episode. And the idea - base of story is far to be a bad one. But many are wrong.

First - the acting , the presence of George Hamilton being a nice gift for viewer, not his acting. Second - the end, gentle, sweet, graceful but not so realistic after the effort of young lady to be accepted as wife. Not the last, the strange game with reincarnation idea. The result - a spring - air episode, nice for few reasons, seductive in some measure, having as axis same Boris Karloff but missing something to made it a real admirable episode.

A good point - the work of young Julius Johnson as Rama.

(1926-1987), who claimed to be the reincarnation of a man's wife who died 10 days after childbirth in Mathura (145 km from her own hometown of Delhi).

All the non-Indian cast faking Hindi accents gives this episode an unintentional humorous aspect.

A tepid little drama. A young man in India goes to the mother of the woman he loves to ask for her hand in marriage. She tells him it is impossible since she had been married in a previous life. They are heading to the place she lived in that life before she died. There is a man living there with his son (George Hamilton) who is a widower who invested badly and can't afford to send young George to school in the states. There is good deal of tussling as the young woman tries to convince the father (who must be sixty or more) that she is his wife, reincarnated. Everything just drifts off from there with sort of an unsatisfying ending. I guess in the Hindu religion what happens, happens, and one cannot manipulate the decisions of Brahma.