The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

• The film is based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Max Ehrlich, who also wrote the screenplay.
• Director J. Lee Thompson, best known for 'Cape Fear' (1962) and 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961), plays the reincarnation premise with the grounded grit of a police procedural rather than gothic horror.
• Margot Kidder plays Marcia Curtis, the widow of the man Peter believes he once was and mother to Ann (Jennifer O'Neill), the woman Peter falls for. In a strange bit of real-life trivia, Kidder was actually about six months younger than her onscreen daughter.
• Production shot on location across western Massachusetts in spring 1974 -- Springfield, Amherst, Holyoke, Northampton, Deerfield, and Longmeadow all appear in the film.
• Jerry Goldsmith composed the score; the original master tapes have since been lost.
• The film premiered in New York City on April 25, 1975.

Marcia's violence isn't just jealousy; she represents the id of the previous life trying to silence the reincarnated ego before it can disrupt the family dynamic established after the first murder.

The recurring water imagery suggests Peter isn't actually reincarnated but is suffering from a dissociative fugue state triggered by repressed guilt over a crime he committed in his current life.

Marcia's willingness to accept Peter as her dead husband implies a cyclical control pattern where she actively seeks out his return to maintain power over the family, making her the true architect of the tragedy rather than a wronged widow.

College professor Peter Proud can't shake a recurring nightmare: a man murdered at a lake, bludgeoned by the woman who loved him. Convinced he's reliving another man's death, Peter traces the dream to a small Massachusetts town and falls for a local woman, Ann Curtis — only to discover her mother, Marcia, is the widow of the man he's certain he used to be. Thompson turns reincarnation into a slow-motion trap: the closer Peter gets to the truth about his past life, the more his romance with Ann curdles into something far more twisted, and Marcia isn't done settling scores with the husband who wronged her the first time around. By the time the truth surfaces, the lake that swallowed one life is ready for another.