THE MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF (1970)

Harold Pelham (Roger Moore, pictured) is driving like a bat out of hell, looking like a man possessed, careening recklessly in and out of traffic until he finally crashes. In the hospital, he flatlines briefly on the operating table but his vital signs return, though for a few seconds, two separate heartbeats register on the machine. He recovers and goes back to his wife and his workplace, but things begin to seem a bit strange. One night, a co-worker shows up for drinks at the Pelhams; they weren't expecting him, but he claims that Pelham invited him to stop by when they met at their club last week, though Pelham insists he wasn't at the club then. His wife sees an unusual silver sports car parked outside their house on occasion. Other co-workers begin claiming to have seen Pelham out and about though he swears he wasn't. Finally, while at a casino with his wife, a sexy woman walks up to him in an intimate fashion and says, "I didn’t know you were married." Understandably, his wife is upset at this intimation of an affair (especially since their sex life has been nonexistent lately) though Pelham claims he doesn't know the woman. He becomes convinced that a double of his is running around, trying to ruin his life (there's a subplot about industrial espionage at work in which he is implicated), though a therapist suggests that he may be experiencing a kind of split personality in which he is living out suppressed fantasies. 

On holidays, my husband and I usually spend the day in our pajamas watching a themed movie marathon. The most recent was “doubles and doppelgangers.” I had never even heard of this movie though it crops up on almost every Internet list of doubles films, and it turned out to be a good find. It is practically an archetype of a modern doppleganger story, the granddaddy of which is probably Poe's "William Wilson." (See SPIRITS OF THE DEAD for an adaptation of that story.) I won't spoil the ending, except to say that, though it is satisfying, it doesn't worry too much about explanations. Moore, in his last movie before he took on the role of James Bond, is very good as a man unmoored by his experiences. For much of the film's running time, we're not sure if this is a story of psychology or of the supernatural, and Moore does a nice job balancing those two possible outcomes. In fact, the ending suggests that both are at play, and the ambiguity that is left is rather tantalizing. Recommended wholeheartedly. [Streaming]