Konterr Brilliant and touching

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

csbrown07 Sorry I cannot understand rave reviews of this film. On the surface it is a good thriller but has serious flaws1. Every character acts suspiciously like an Agatha Christie novel, even the British ex-pat teacher that never appears again2. -Spoiler- why did the Paul character ruin the film from the camera if he was not the killer. It just does not make sense3. -Spoiler- there are no clues during the film of the eventual Perpetrator. A mystery/crime plot should at least leave some clues rather just presenting the killer at the last moment.Overall not really good

muzzy16 In the early 70's I spent a day with my friend cycling on a lonely country road somewhere in Hungary. Then, in the evening, we saw this movie in a village movie theatre with only a couple of viewers. It was frightening, and after the movie we had to cycle home on the country road.Other: nice to see Sándor Éles ( this is the original spelling ), the Hungarian born actor in the movie.The hole film has a special atmosphere with a sharp contrast between the sunny countryside and the dark events. Interesting scene when the old man ( the policeman's father ) says that it's going to rain. In the final scene it really starts raining.One of the best suspense movies. Recommended.

obscuringrichie And Soon the Darkness turns on a now common premise. Two young girls go out on back roads to seek the real France, only to find true danger on an isolated landscape.The film is somewhat unique in its ability to capture terror in broad daylight in a not wholly vacant surrounding. The two girls seemingly have nothing to worry about as they bike along the open roads to their next destination. The set up, though somewhat overdone in present day (and therefore mildly less powerful then it would have been in its time), creates a fairly solid foundation for a truly suspenseful ride. However, once one of the girls goes missing, the realism of the story gets thrown to the wind and some of its primary fear elements turn to frustrations hurled at the television set.While the acting is generally good, there are moments when it seems that Jane (Pamela Franklin) has completely forgotten that her friend has gone missing in the same area where another girl had been murdered not so long ago...that she is in a different country where she doesn't speak the language or know anyone...that the one man she had been confiding in now appears to be a killer. Not only that, but Jane is a reflection of an earlier model of horror victim. On the cusp of "girl power" films, Jane's only defense for the majority of the picture is to run and hide. Most notably, when Jane is in the house where Paul is breaking in, she doesn't search for a weapon. She knows where he is coming in. She has the advantage, but instead she runs on. It's an image that is somewhat hard to accept when seeing it for the first time in modern day.The true faults of the film, though, are in the actions of Paul (Sandor Eles) which never go explained. Why is her always hiding? Why does he constantly leave Jane in the dark? While I'm a fan of filling in the blanks with films, this one seems more like lackluster writing efforts than intentional mystery. For one thing, Paul must be the worst detective of all time. He destroys evidence that may have aided in bringing a killer to justice. He withholds information that could have protected Jane. He is terrible at searching trailers...how many hiding places could there really be (come on, you checked there in the last one). He doesn't see a pair of white panties on a dark ground during the day, but thinks to check under cars for missing bicycles...I find it very hard to find a film scary when the characters seems so utterly incompetent. The film does a good job of building suspense, but then you start to really not care if anyone makes it out alive. There are many others that do the same job while creating logical plot leaps, character development, and fulfilling endings. This film is not the full package.

gavin6942 Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) are English girls on a cycling holiday in France terrorized by a sex maniac.Written by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation and directed by Robert Fuest. Fuest does an adequate job, but his work is much better with his next two projects: the Dr. Phibes films with Vincent Price.Howard Maxford says the film has "a couple of good thrills", but is "overstretched" (the film is 99 minutes). Maxford is typically harsh on horror, but his assessment here is fairly accurate: the first would maintain a better pace if it were five minutes shorter, and the "good thrills" are few, as essentially a single English-speaking character had to carry the entire film.The film is typical of the era for Britain. Its light-hearted at times, though it does tend to get dark briefly. No outright gore, and even the "Sex maniac" aspects are pretty tame, though somewhat terrifying for the time, most likely.The film did not hold my interest as well as I had hoped, so I cannot give it a ringing endorsement. But with the release of the remake, it certainly never hurts to be aware of the source material.