Fragment of Fear (1971)

You won't be disappointed!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Ex-junkie author David Hemmings (Tim) is chilling out in Italy and agrees to meet his aunt Flora Robson (Lucy) for lunch in Pompeii. I'm afraid that's not going to happen – Robson doesn't make it. She's been strangled. Hemmings wants to find out more about her aunt's life and pursues his own investigation back in London. However, there is a network called 'The Stepping Stones' that seems hell-bent on preventing him from discovering anything. He's a marked man unless he drops his curiosity.It's a tense film if a little complicated at times as you're never quite sure who's who. Basically, suspect everyone who Hemmings comes into contact with. The cast are good and the story unravels well but the ending just didn't do it for me. I wanted something better as things don't get resolved in the manner I had wanted. And the music by Johnny Harris is laughably inappropriate. I see that some nutter has previously referred to it as a superb music score. He clearly has no knowledge of how to score a film. The film leaves unanswered questions and that was a let-down for me.

I felt this could have been so much better and began to temporarily tire of it somewhere around the halfway mark and then it lifted and ran pretty well to the end. David Hemmings seemed a bit limp and Gayle Hunnicutt almost asleep but then maybe it was the erratic script. I guess there is also the problem where a film is going to have different levels of reality that not all can be made too transparently clear. There is a wonderful cameo from Wilfred Hyde-White and things certainly pick up with the appearance of Daniel Massey and Arthur Lowe. Apart from the dialogue being rather lacklustre at times and some scenes going on a tad too long, the music is completely wrong. I have seen the score by Johnny Harris highly praised and possibly outside of the film the jazzy music is fine but here it is too loud, too obvious and basically, bloody annoying. Despite all this, the film remains likable enough and certainly worth a look.

***SPOILERS*** Recovering drug addict and best selling British author Tim Brett,David Hennings,is to meet his Aunt Lucy Dawson,Flora Robson, after church services while visiting her on vacation in Pompeii Italy but someone got to her first. Found strangled to death outside the ancient ruins of the city the police can't find any reason for her murder other then it was the work of a escaped or as of yet uncommitted lunatic from a local mental institution! Back in Britin Tim makes it a point to find his aunt's murderer or murderers who in fact has been shadowing him all the way there form Italy!The first tip that Tim gets to the reason why his Aunt Lucy was murdered is when he's confronted by this strange woman, Mary Wimbush, at his apartment building asking him to drop out of the case. It seems that she's somehow involved in Aunt Lucy's murder in her knowing the real reasons behind it. It's later that Tim is allegedly accused by the woman of trying to assault her by London police Sgt. Matthews, Derek Newark, and is threatening to press charges against him! Things get even stranger for Tim as it's later found out that the woman in question, Mary Wimbush, was found strangled! That after she later told Tim that she want's his forgiveness in that what Sgt. Matthews told him about her was all BS! In fact it's later discovered that this Sgt. Matthwes is no cop at all but an impostor who's working with this shadowy group of ex-cons called the "Stepping Stones" who were in fact founded and supported by Tim's late Aunt Lucy!As Tim soon finds out Aunt Lucy was involved in getting high IQ and highly educated ex-convicts high profile jobs in the government and business world by getting them fake identities and hiding their criminal records through her "Stepping Stones" project! With many of these persons now in very high and prominent positions she was blackmailing them to keep her from exposing their past and thus destroying their very successful careers! It's when Aunt Lucy went a bit too far that they, the ex-cons, took matters into their own hands. As for Tim who's soon to marry Juliet Briston, Gayle Hunnicutt, the woman who in fact found the murdered Aunt Lucy his meddling in the case and making things a bit hot for them has the "Stpping Stones" planning to totally discredit if not murder him. That's by making it look like he's back to taking drugs which would make whatever he say about them totally unbelievable!***SPOILERS*** David Hennings holds the plot together even when it starts to get a bit confusing as ex-drug addict Tim Brett who begins to realize that he's way over his head in trying to find his Aunt Lucy's murderer. Despite her kind heart Aunt Lucy's concocted a sinister plan to get revenge against the very persons, ex-convicts, whom she's been helping all these years. This stems from the murder of her husband of just two months in a home invasion over 20 years ago! Tim in trying to find his Aunt Lucy's killer opened up a while new can of worms that not only put his and his fiancée Juliet life in danger but in a strange way, through Aunt Lucy blackmailing the ex-cons as well as covering up their criminal records, justified her own murder!

For the most part, "Fragment Of Fear" is a gripping film. Although sometimes it can get too talky, it cleverly builds an atmosphere of justifiable paranoia, as we can see both why the hero feels so trapped and scared and why it is difficult for other people to believe his stories. But in the last 5 minutes or so, the film goes all vague and ambiguous on us, leaving us to interpret it all in our own way. The problem is that either way leaves too many unanswered questions. What does hold the film together is a committed central performance by David Hemmings; in what is largely an one-man-show, he creates a believable Everyman, a regular guy who gets in over his head. And an amusing credit for those who stick to the very end: "Colombus" is played by....a London pigeon. Who would have guessed? **1/2 out of 4.