Fright (1972)

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This movie sets up a fairly simple premise, but manages to maintain a creepy, uncomfortable atmosphere. Basically, Susan George is a baby sitter who is terrorized by a madman; as others have noted, the first half of the move bubbles along but then it tends to get a little bogged down in the second half, but hey, it's hardly high art. The actors do a good job of keeping the tension high with the exception of George Cole, whose face never seems to betray anything apart from a slightly ambiguous surprise, the sort of face you'd expect from somebody who'd just seen a streaker on the 6 o'clock news while eating dinner. Part of the fun of the movie is the hideous/awesome 70s fashions, Dennis Waterman's cardigan being the prime offender, his robust 'romancing' of George would not go down well in this day and age I suspect. In summary: worth a go if you're a fan of old Hammer films and 70s retro styling.

Fright is set in England & starts one dark night as a young babysitter named Amanda (Susan George) arrives at the home of Jim (George Cole) & Helen Lloyd (Honor Blackman) who have hired her to babysit their young son Tara (Tara Collinson) for the evening while they go out to celebrate their anniversary, all seems well although Helen seems a little nervous & Amanda foresees no problems. However Jim & Helen are actually celebrating the fact that Helen's divorce from her insane murderer of a husband has been granted & she is now free to live in peace but is still uneasy with good reason as well since her husband Brian (Ian Bannen) is a real psycho. It just so happens that Brian has escaped from the asylum he has been locked up in & decides to call on his ex-wife & son but finds Amanda there instead & terrorises her as she tries to protect herself & Tara with no way of escaping the house or phoning for help...This English production was directed by Peter Collinson & is a very impressive early psycho slasher horror thriller that surely must be a contender for the very first teen slasher style horror film ever made, while not typical of what the genre has become all the trademarks are present & the likes of Halloween (1978) probably owe a fair debt of inspiration to Fright. Fright is just a great film on various levels, from a fairly tense & suspenseful horror to the climactic hostage showdown between the deranged Brian & the police, there are many elements in Fright that would now be considered clichéd like the sexually repressed babysitter alone in a big house being terrorised, the annoying sexually frustrated boyfriend playing tricks trying to scare her, ordinary sounds taking on a creepy menace, various false scares, phone lines being cut & a deranged killer escaped from a mental hospital but back when Fright was made these ideas were pretty new & almost certainly had never been used in this way before & to be honest I didn't mind as it's so well handled & genuinely gripping & suspenseful that I just went with it & enjoyed it. At just under an hour & a half Fright lasts long enough without ever becoming boring or dull & I particularly liked the atmospheric set-up before the action kicks in towards the end & this is where I think Fright is most successful. The only slight disappointment is the very low body count & because many of it's core elements are so routine now Fright is maybe a little predictable when seen in 2012 after three decades of faceless teen slashers that tread very familiar ground.One of the reasons why Fright works so well is the direction as it's superb, from the way he introduces character's to the way shots are framed Fright is great to look & hasn't dated that badly at all. The way Amanda walks up to the house at the start & the camera lingers on large spikes on the metal gates to the very claustrophobic & spooky feel of the house with lots of great angles & use of shadow & foreground objects (Dennis Waterman quips 'you could make a horror film in here' in a nice pre Scream (1996) genre self reference) to the way the character's are dressed with Amanda in particular having the perfect balance of beauty & vulnerability in her purple dress & cute boots. There are one or two jumpy moments & the whole film has a suspenseful feel to it, there's not much gore & only one person is killed which is the only real weak point as far as I can see but sometimes the story & visuals are enough to draw me in & keep me gripped. There's a bit of sex as well as Brian decides to have sex with Amanda thinking it's Helen his ex-wife but I guess rape is rape however you dress it up.Probably shot on a tiny budget Fright deserves to be better known & more widely seen, the production values are good but the clever photography & direction really shine through here. The acting is great from a top British cast, from the sexy Susan George (how short is that dress again?) to familiar faces like Dennis Waterman, George Cole (later to star together in the comedy drama television series Minder) & Honor Blackman probably best remembered for her role in the Bond film Goldfinger (1964).Fright deserves to be better known & is something of a forgotten classic, I really liked it & thought it was a tense & suspenseful horror thriller that makes the most of what it has, a solid script & superb direction & photography really help as well. One of the best films I have seen in ages, this one's definitely a keeper.

Fright (1971) ** (out of 4) British thriller has teenager Amanda (Susan George) showing up for a babysitting job when she soon finds herself being terrorized by the kid's father shows up after escaping from a mental hospital. The father plans on murdering his ex-wife but plans change after he notices that the babysitter reminds him of her. FRIGHT has a few tense moments early on but after a pretty good start the film sadly falls apart pretty quickly. I thought the first thirty-minutes of the film were rather well-directed and features a couple tense sequences and it's really too bad the rest of the film didn't live up to the title. Director Peter Collison really does a nice job at building up the tension early on and I especially liked the way that he used sound effects to build up not only the atmosphere but also some creepy moments. One perfect example deals with some dripping water but the highlight of the film is one of the first stalking scenes we witness as the babysitter's boyfriend is outside and being followed. This scene is without question the best of the movie and is almost strong enough to make the entire film worth sitting through. The problem with the final hour is that not too much happens. The entire thing is extremely slow paced and like many British films, the dialogue is just way too much and it pretty much takes over the picture and not a single thing said is interesting. Even worse is how the film keeps flashing back and forth between what's going on inside the house and what the kid's mother and stepfather are doing in town. Yet another problem is simply how stupid the babysitter gets once more of the action takes place inside the house. Fans of George will no doubt want to see her here as she's as cute as ever and turns in a decent performance. Honor Blackman and Ian Bannen are good in their supporting roles as well. FRIGHT manages to have a couple good sequences but sadly there just aren't enough to keep the film entertaining throughout.

OK, I know a lot of people like this and that's fine. I don't find this earlier slasher to be a misunderstood or beyond bad flick but I still think it is punctured in many weak spots. I'm not sure why but I think it was because of these things.1. They revealed the killer way too soon and I found that to be heavily weak. I liked this killer but at the same time he's not as memorable as Billy from Black Christmas or even the popular culture icon, Michael Myers from Halloween.Yeah that was my only really major issue but there were also little bits and pieces which didn't work. More kills could have been better and the kills here sucked. The atmosphere of the house was scary but the death scenes, the killer or not even the music scared me. This film's called Fright and it didn't frighten me.The good was that even if the music wasn't creepy, I liked it, the acting was excellent, the house was scary to my satisfaction and the angle shots of things was done well.Overall it is an average flick. I was hoping I would have given it more than a 7 and I was really excited for this film since it was way way before Halloween and other slashers but it wasn't what it turned out to be. Oh well. I just wish it has the sheer power like Halloween, Black Christmas and even others like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on your Grave and the early comers of Psycho.It's a 5.4/10 on this one.