Cristi_Ciopron
A movie with Hemmings, Gayle Hunnicutt, Adolfo Celi (a serviceable supporting player), W. H. White, about insanity, severe delusions, grief, very accomplished unpretentious craftsmanship, it's not artsy, but stylish, lavish, colorful; the style is a European synthesis, not only British, but continental as well
.Very suspenseful, one of the most accomplished genre movies, of an ineffable freshness; the sense of creepiness is as efficient as nuanced and sober. It has an undertone of distorted sexuality, the predilection for aged women, Bunface and the schoolgirls, the eerie but certain appeal of the aged ladies, those kisses; the focus is on eyes, mouths, thighs in their shameless bare luxuriance. Tim Brett's flat gives a very suggestive sense of the place.The young women appear as naked thighs, and so does the seductress in the train, the temptress who knows the writer's address. Also, the leading character's 1st shot shows his legs.Those thighs symbolize the access, not as much denied (by the women), as repellent. He feels threatened by the walk, by the bride's walk
. The male characters, beginning with the copper who visits him, are paternal symbols. They are burly. The women's thighs are viscous. The women are cold, tempting, indifferent, desired. The writer resents them. Force, desire, dream, deceit; he feels deceived, and resents health, the insanity proves a stronger temptation than the drugs he used to take.In its depiction of the insanity, the movie shows the feverish phony cleverness of the delusion, with its crippling mistrust; and it's not a moralizing stance, but a clinical one, the twilight of a mind, clinically depicted. The addiction is a _crippleness, and the leading character ends in a wheelchair, i. e. denying himself almost everything, deprived of walk and deprived of rest, unable to walk, unable to rest, dominated by his wife, defeated. The puzzling plot has been meant to be dreamlike. The eerie, spooky story-line from the standpoint of insanity had a worthy career in the cinema, and occasioned other movies as well.Both leads give apposite performances. It's impressive how both of them understood the requirements of their roles.Gayle Hunnicutt is decorative, and her role required a bland act, she had to be a decorative doll. Hemmings made me think of a plumper and more urbane Dean; what might seem like overacting actually suits his part, suggesting the behavior of a psychotic, the feverish, sometimes frenzied behavior.
jonathan-577
This British - very British - thriller trades on the good name of David Hemmings, who at this time still had substantial "Blow Up" cachet left to p*ss away. His jaded ex-junkie finds his aunt murdered one sunny vacation, and sets out to find out whodunit amid many threatening overtures from big nasties. The main selling point here is a wild and wholly inappropriate soundtrack from one Johnny Harris - Hemmings is just shlepping around the funeral doing nothing in particular, and in comes that damned 'screaming flute' with attendant bongos. It's not embarrassingly bad, but it is dull for long stretches of dialogue in between its set pieces, and for all its attempts to be tense and/or creepy the plot's passing resemblance to Argento's "Deep Red" (also with Hemmings) does this no favours at all.
FilmFlaneur
SPOILER WARNINGThis is a little known gem from the underrated director of the cult road movie Vanishing Point which plays with audience expectations - before undermining them completely in an audacious and unexpected twist.Fans of David Hemmings, who appreciate his work at this time in Blow Up and Deep Red ( to name two of his most famous cult collaborations) will be delighted to discover this performance. Minor characters are also well drawn and much of the location work in London and elsewhere is atmospheric and excellent.The central concern of the film is Hemmings' suspicion that there is a conspiracy afoot attempting, amongst other things, to undermine his sanity. Some of the elements here recall Polanski's work on creating an effect of mental instability in his Repulsion.His increasingly frantic and neurotic attempts to unravel the mystery leads the viewers to expect a tidy denouement, when the true facts are revealed and Hemmings' self esteem and position is restored. Hemmings is too likeable and too much a central figure upon whom the viewer depends to make judgements to *really* be at fault...When in the last moments of the film there is no tidy conclusion to the matter, save the idea that Hemmings is actually unbalanced, and that what has happened has been the result of his delusions, it is far more shocking than a more conventional 'tidy' explanation.. the plot lines, the unexplained elements of the film, are left trailing, just as Hemming's character's sanity is left in shreds. Hemming's final collapsed journey in a wheelchair, both crippled by his experiences and mentally exhausted, is very disturbing. It is as if the viewer is staring into a bottomless pit of madness, where all certainty is stripped away, and ranks with the great moments of horror film.