Based on the 1973 novel by Max Ehrlich, who adapted it for the screenplay, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud is about, well, Peter Proud (Michael Sarrazin). He’s a college professor who keeps dreaming of a man being murdered by Marcia (Margot Kidder), as well as another woman and places that he comes to learn are another life.

He’s driving his girlfriend Nora nuts with all his ranting of reincarnation, his doctors have no answers and a documentary on TV leads him to Massachusettes, where he begins to travel to the places he has only seen in dreams, meeting an older Marcia and falling in love with her daughter Ann (Jennifer O’Neill, The Psychic), despite everything in the movie leading you to believe that he’s her father.

In fact, he admits that he is to Marcia, which pretty much seals his fate. But hey — reincarnation!

Director J. Lee Thompson had a long and pretty great career, starting in the 1950s with movies like The Weak and the Wicked and Yield to the Night, which were written by his second wife Joan Henry. He’s best known for The Guns of Navarone, Cape Fear, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, The Evil That Men Do and Happy Birthday to Me. He would work for Cannon Films for the last movies of his career, with stand outs like 10 to Midnight, The Ambassador, King Solomon’s Mines, Murphy’s Law, Firewalker, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, Messenger of Death and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects.

This was a pretty big movie when released, but isn’t that well remembered, at least in America. It was remade as Karz in India, which has been remade several times. Then again, reincarnation always makes more sense in India.