Roy Boulting's second film with Hayley Mills, and she's shot very prettily, but really the film's more a tour de force for Hywel Bennett (who worked with the two of them before in The Family Way).
Bennett plays a psycho from a wealthy family (Phyllis Calvert) who pretends to be dim around Hayley Mills. He goes to live with her, keeping up the pretense - he sleeps with her mother (Billie Whitelaw, who doesn't really look old enough to be Mills' mother) which is pretty full on because she thinks he's mentally delayed.
I was confused by some of this. I'm not sure how Bennett thinks he's going to seduce Mills by being slow - he goes the grope on her in a river at one stage and she recoils, she never seems that interested in him. Also the film hints that he's gay - he's got all these male muscle magazines in his bedroom and he seems tormented.
The film copped it, deservedly, for the suggestion towards the end that Bennett was the way he was because his brother had down syndrome. As many critics pointed out this bit wasn't needed - the film is basically an old fashioned psycho thriller with some modern gore and psychology.
The cast is excellent. Mills doesn't have much to do except react - I think Boulting was trying to fashion her as a Hitchcock blonde but she's very passive. Frank Finlay is enjoyably smarmy as Bennett's stepfather, Bennett gets to act all over the shop and does well, Barry Foster is nicely slimy as a lodger (I was disappointed he wasn't killed). The climax is unwhelming when it needed to be a pow - I don't think Roy Boulting was a terribly gifted visual director. (This was a problem evident in the Sidney Gilliat directed film with Bennett and Mills, Endless Night.)
Bernard Herrman provided an excellent score including a whistling tune which Tarantino pinched for Kill Bill. But it's a movie that needed a Hitchcock to direct and didn't get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment