| /spectacletheater | /spectaclenyc | was asked once why I prefer to watch old movies and TV movies which most people have never heard of and I replied because of 'Sybil'. There will be snacks and an intermission, so you won’t have to hold your water. Hosts Tom Blunt and Cristina Cacioppo will guide you through the fugue induced by this three-hour undertaking. Shot by cinematographer Mario Tosi, the very same year he did Carrie. Actress Martine Bartlett plays the character with such playful menace, like a child torturing a reptile. Wilbur gets them talking, and here your own nightmares can begin as we’re introduced to Hattie, a mother that makes Joan Crawford seem straight-up cuddly. Quickly the other personalities start to emerge – Peggy, the frightened child Vicky, the francophonic sophisticate and Marcia, the suicidal artist, among others. Cornelia Wilbur (Joanne Woodward, herself a multiple personality alum with The Three Faces of Eve) who quickly realizes she’s going to need a bigger band-aid. Her tendency of putting her wrist through windows lands her in the hospital and in the care of Dr. Substitute teaching in New York City, Sybil finds the blackouts that have afflicted her for her entire life are coming on stronger – one minute she’s leading a game of Follow the Leader, next she’s knee-deep in a Central Park pond.

Based on a book almost as heavily groped by teenage girls as “Go Ask Alice”, the made-for-TV movie Sybil stars Sally Field as the titular split-personality basket case.

Sybil 1976 full movie online