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Here’s a rare one from the 70’s. Some say it might have been better left there. But for all you Nimoy fans out there, here’s….

Baffled! (1973)

Lets face it Leonard Nimoy is good at several things. Hes a great director (Three Men & A Baby). He’s a great biographer (I Am not Spock, I am Spock). He’s a talented photographer (The Full Body Project); An accomplished poet   (You & I) (1973) (ISBN 978-0-912310-26-8) (Will I Think of You). (1974) (ISBN 0912310701)

Trouble is, though, unless he’s playing a certain pointy eared cerebral, green blooded alien, he’s a lousy actor.

Some may argue his performance in the remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) was fair to middling. It was, but he was playing his psychiatrist character like… well, you know who.

So let’s examine his role in the 1973 occult thriller move Baffled! The plot involves a racing driver, called Tom Kovak, who suddenly begins to experience snippets of future events, apparently so he can warn the recipients of his new found gifts and prevent terrible disaster from occurring. It’s a pity that these visions didn’t extend to seeing how badly this was movie was to be received; Nimoy could have prevented a professional disaster for himself at the same time. Anyhow, back to the plot, such as it is. He meets up with a psychic expert played by Susan Hampshire and the action switches to a formulaic mystery at a remote house on the English coast. The movie was a pilot for a thankfully never realized TV series. Nimoy seemed to oscillate between two expressions of acting in the movie. Pain or bemusement; or a bizarre combination of the two. Yes he was obviously baffled by Baffled! And so were the viewers by the end. Baffled as to how they could possibly recover the last hour and thirty minutes of their lives.

If you’re a Nimoy fan and you haven’t seen this one, then give it a spin round the track. You may be moderately amused.