Any serious fan of Hammer Films knows all about these juicy
little gems, but for the more casual viewer who thinks of Hammer’s output as the
Christopher Lee Dracula and Peter
Cushing Frankenstein series, you’re
in for quite a treat.
The film company itself coined the term “mini-Hitchcock”
which had a two-fold meaning. These stories were modeled after the suspense
films Psycho (and to a lesser degree,
Vertigo), and were produced on an
even lower budget than Psycho.
I’ve often compared these Women in Peril stories to some of
the Gothic Romances of the same era. Scream
of Fear (Taste of Fear in Britain )
came out in 1961. Its mechanical plot twists borrow heavily from the
aforementioned Hitchcock titles, but also from women’s suspense thrillers of
the day. Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree
comes to mind.
Scream of Fear is the
first and arguably the best of the series (which also includes Maniac, Paranoiac, and Nightmare,
among others). Jimmy Sangster’s script is chock full of red herrings and
surprise twists, some of them less plausible than others. Props go to director
Seth Holt for making it all look classy and believable.
Susan Strasberg plays Penny Appleby, a wheelchair bound,
dark haired waif in oversized Foster Grant sunglasses, who returns to the home
on the French Riviera she has not visited in more than ten years. Here she
meets her new stepmother, Jane (Ann Todd), Robert, the handsome chauffeur, and
Dr. Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee), her father’s physician. Papa Appleby, however,
seems to be missing. Or is he? Penny talks to him over the phone – the day
after seeing his corpse propped up in a chair inside the pool house. Is Papa
dead? Is Penny mad, or is something more sinister going on?
I’m a big fan of psychological thrillers and mysteries with
clever twists and turns. This sort of movie makes me giddy and I can pop one of
them in the DVD player several times a year. Others may throw up their hands in
despair crying, “Give me a break!” Whichever the case, if you are unfamiliar
with these twisted little thrillers and have a pining for lovely old black and
white suspense films, track this one down. And as always, thank me later.
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