Friday, October 14, 2016

Horror Countdown 2016: Hysteria (1965)

Hysteria (1965) dir. Freddie Francis, Hammer Films






And now we move back into the realm of the traditional thriller, something Hammer had a flair for.


Chris Smith (Robert Webber) is not having a good time. He's been in a hospital for some time, the result of car crash. He's also a total amnesiac. After four months he is well enough to leave, but he still has no memory of anything prior to the last four months. Dr. Keller (Anthony Newlands), who insists the treatment has been paid for anonymously, takes Chris to an apartment which has also been paid for by the same benefactor. Keller's nurse Gina (Jennifer Jayne), meanwhile, has been seeing as much of Chris as she can since he was admitted although her interest may not be purely professional.

Chris isn't satisfied by this situation though and he hires a gumshoe named Hemmings (Maurice Denham) to try and find out something about himself as well as the only evidence he had with him, namely a picture ripped from a newspaper. The only evidence Hemmings can find leads Chris to the photographer who took the picture. Who isn't very helpful, as the only thing he can recall about the photo is that the woman in it was murdered.

While all this is going on, the couple next door to Chris have been arguing with increasing frequency. Factor in the fleeting glimpses of a woman who looks like the one in the picture and finding a bloody knife in his shower, leaves Chris wondering if maybe his mind is working against him. When Denise (Lelia Goldoni) arrives, claiming to be the widow of the man behind Chris's accident, Chris is having hard time wondering if he's still in his right mind when a dead woman props up in his shower. Did he kill her? Who can he trust?

Pretty good, although it does come across as someone trying to be very much like Hitchcock. Some roles are fairly underdeveloped, but the question is that the point? We can't quite trust what we see on camera, so you'll have to pay attention.









No comments:

Post a Comment