'The Snorkel': Low-key thriller with nice pay-off

The Snorkel (1958)
Starring: Peter Van Eyck, Mandy Miller, Betta St. John, William Franklyn, and Gregoire Aslan
Director: Guy Green
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Paul Decker (Van Eyck) constructs the perfect locked-room murder by drugging his wife and filling the sealed room with gas while he hides under the floor breathing through a snorkel connected to fresh air via tubes in the outside wall. He remains hidden until the body has been discovered and taken away, and with everyone believing he is across the border on business, he seems to have the perfect alibi. Everyone that is, except for his teenage step-daughter Candice (Miller) who is convinced he murdered her. Although no adults believe her, Candice continues to push and investigate on her own, and soon Decker realizes he must eliminate her, too.

"The Snorkel" is a mystery in the vein of the "Columbo" television series, in the sense that the audience is shown how the murderer sets up his "perfect crime" and the subsequent enjoyment comes from watching his said perfection be picked apart and his crimes ultimately coming to light due to something he overlooked or an attempt to stop whoever it is who is investigating him from succeeding.

Like a "Columbo" episode, the murderer here is such a vile individual that viewers can't wait to see him exposed--there's every indication that this is his second murder as part of a long-term plan to gain access to his wife's fortune, and he is so base and arrogant that his wife isn't even buried before he starts putting the moves on Candice's hot young governess (Betta St. John)--but unlike on "Columbo" we're not given insight into the entire method by which Decker commits his crime, but the film lets viewers work it out at the same time Candice does.

And that's the point where the film starts to get really fun, the point where Decker realizes that he needs to get rid of Candice, but also the point where he starts being too smart for his own good.

The film's closing minutes represent a near-perfect ending. Candice turns key parts of Decker's scheme on him, with the help of a little bit of coincidence, and sets him up for a heaping helping of poetic justice... a great pay-off for the hour's time during which we've watched Decker ooze his way across the screen with an ever-growing wish for the ability to reach into the film and beat him to a pulp.

With a script that moves so fast that we can barely notice its populated by two-dimensional characters; great performances by Peter Van Eyck, as a slimy villain you'll love to hate, and Mandy Miller, in one of her 'wounded kitten'-type roles that she so excelled at; and director Guy Green who brings across Candice's pursuit for truth with such conviction that viewers will be with her all the way, but will also wonder if her fanaticism isn't evidence that she's not just a child but also more than just a little crazy, "The Snorkel" is an excellent film from a nearly forgotten chapter in the history of Hammer Studios... from a time when they were more known for their thrillers than their technicolor Gothic horror romps.

Check it out. It's one of six undeservedly obscure films presented in the "Icons of Suspense" DVD collection.

'Never Take Sweets from a Stranger' is an undervalued gem from Hammer Films

Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (aka "Never Take Candy from a Stranger") (1960)
Starring: Janina Faye, Patrick Allen, Gwen Watford, Allison Leggatt, Frances Green, Bill Nagy, and Patrick Aylmer
Director: Cyril Frankel
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

After his daughter (Faye) is victimized by a pedophile, a school principal (Allen) finds himself faced with indifferent law enforcement and fearful citizens of the small town he lives in... because the man who abused his daughter is the patriarch of the rich family who unofficially runs the community.

If you're prone to write off Hammer Films as merely the creators of old horror movies and cheap thrillers, you need to see this movie. It's the one of the most realistic treatments of a child molestation case to ever be put on film, with its portrayal of people willing to allow a known pedophile prey on their children in order to preserve their jobs and reputations, and with its portrayal of the difficulty the justice system can face when attempting to address criminals like this--especially when they hire ruthless attorneys with morals not much different than their own.

Painfully and frighteningly realistic--and perhaps even depressingly so, as not much seems to have changed when it comes to the world turning a blind eye toward and making excuses for rich and powerful pedophiles--this is a film that builds steadily and relentlessly toward a shocking finale... which must have seemed even more-so to audiences in 1960 when this film was first released. Great performances from child actress Janina Faye and Patrick Aylmer go a long way to making this movie as great as it is--Faye is perfect as girl around which the story swirls, coming across as believable and realistic throughout; while Aylmer manages to portray menace and outright evil in his scenes without uttering a word. The talent of these two performers is what makes the climax of the film as harrowing as it is... especially once it becomes clear that the filmmakers are going to break one of the biggest film taboos of all and that a little child will be dead by the hands of a human monster before the end credits roll.

Although this is probably not one of Roman Polanski's favorite films--not only does it deal with the damage pedophiles can do to victims (even when they don't rape them, like he does) the pedophile here is ultimately brought to justice--it is worth seeing by anyone who can appreciate a well-made drama.

'Stop Me Before I Kill!'' is flawed but watchable

Stop Me Before I Kill! (aka "The Full Treatment") (1960)
Starring: Ronald Lewis, Claude Dauphin, and Diane Cilento
Director: Val Guest
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A race car driver, Alan Colby (Lewis), recovering from a near-fatal car accident finds himself possessed by nearly uncontrollable urges to murder his wife (Cilento) whenever they are intimate. She convinces him to seek the help of a psychiatrist (Dauphin), but things go from bad to worse when the good doctor proves to have agendas beyond helping his patient recover.

"Stop Me Before I Kill!" (a far weaker title than the original, "The Full Treatment"), has the makings of an excellent psychological thriller, with a cast of characters who each seem simple enough on the surface, but who also each have enough murkiness in their backgrounds that they may be driven by motivations more sinister than the obvious. While it offers some clever twists, it ultimately the film ends up where you expect it to, but enough doubt is thrown on the outcome along the way that the film is still enjoyable.

However, a couple of key missteps keep it from being as good as it could have been.

First of all, the film is a bit too scattered as far as its point of view goes. While most of the film, correctly, is focused around our main protagonist--Alan, the strangely unhinged accident survivor--and events unfold as seen from his point of view, a couple of parts are focused around his well-meaning fiance. While the second of these isn't that damaging to the overall film, especially since it is part of the final confrontation between the film's main characters, the first one is feels like a detour from the rest of the movie that needed to be handled very differently.

Second, the creepy psychiatrist gets way too creepy, way too fast. He is so strange and unpleasant from the very outset that there is never any question in the minds of viewers that he is a Bad Guy. Partway through the movie, as he gains the trust of the protagonist, a little bit of doubt about whether we've misjudged him begins to creep in, but even before we're done second-guessing ourselves, the film proves that we were right all along: Not only is a he a Bad Guy, but he's a Very Bad Guy.

The film, which director Guest co-wrote the script for, would have been much better served if the psychiatrist had come across more likable early on, and then taken on a little bit of shadow and sinisterness as Alex grows increasingly paranoid and obviously nuts. It would have helped the film's overall "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you"-vibe. It would also have strengthened the what-is-now a fairly half-hearted effort to make the wife look like she is out to get Alex, too. Her background hints that she may have reasons, but the way the film is structured never quite makes it believable that she may have it in for him. And in films like this, it's important that at one or more points in the story, the protagonist appears to be all alone and beset by enemies on all sides.

Fairly typical of the thrillers and dramas that were Hammer's bread-and-butter before the studio discovered full-color monsters and babes in flimsy nightgowns, "Stop Me Before I Kill Again!" is not necessarily a film I would go out of my way to seek out, but it's a bit of non-offensive filler in "Icons of Suspense," the multi-film DVD collection of Hammer's black-and-white co-productions with Columbia Pictures.

'Cash on Demand' is an excellent thriller

Cash on Demand (1961)
Starring: Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, and Richard Vernon
Director: Quentin Lawrence
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A bank manager (Cushing) is forced to assist in plundering his own bank when a robber (Morell) holds is wife and child hostage.


This is an undeservedly obscure thriller with stars Peter Cushing and Andre Morell showing that you don't need hundreds of millions of dollars, gunplay and lots of violence to make an exciting movie. Most of this film takes place within a single room--the bank manager's office--and most of it is Cushing and Morrel talking. This is a movie that shows that a great film can arise from a solid script, good actors, and competent direction and editing. (This film cost about $60,000, adjusted for inflation; not single shot is fire; and the worst violence is when Andre Morrel slaps Cushing a couple of times.)

The film is a remarkable entry into the psychological thriller genre, one of roughly a dozen of this type of film co-produced with Columbia Pictures during the early 1960s in the hopes of capturing the success Universal Pictures and Alfred Hitchcock had with "Psycho." This wasn't new territory for Hammer, however, as they had released numerous crime dramas and thrillers during the 1940s and 1950s, before the studio hit cinema gold with their celebrated Technicolor gothic horror flicks.

But the black-and-white thrillers the studio produced during the early 1960s were better than those earlier efforts, and "Cash on Demand" is one of the best.

The film's strength comes to a large degree from Peter Cushing and his portrayal of Fordyce, a man who treats the bank he manages as his kingdom, his staff as serfs, and his office as his throne room. He is an unliked and unlikable in his professional life, but Cushing presents Fordyce's soft side with a single glance at the picture of his wife and son that he keeps on his desk... and that one glance is all the audience needs to be on Fordyce's side once Andre Morell's villanious and manipulative Hepburn enters the bank and turns Fordyce's throne room into his prison and forces him to destroy his kingdom in order to save his the ones he loves.

We feel for Fordyce as he is reduced from a proud and unyielding to sniveling and begging. But we also watch to see how far Hepburn can push Fordyce, if Fordyce will break, and what the result will be if he does.

But Cushing's performance wouldn't be as strong if he didn't have Andre Morell to play off. Morell presents Hepburn as a charming, cheerful person and he delivers every line with a smile in his voice... but in a couple of instances, he reveals his character's true nature and it becomes apparent that he is a mirror image of Fordyce: Fordyce is a soft man within a cold, hard shell, but Hepburn is a hard man with an even harder core hidden behind a soft and smiling exterior. Hepburn has seen through Fordyce's exterior and he takes a great deal of pleasure at breaking it down while lecturing him on proper interaction with his fellow man. The humanistic approach that Hepburn takes to life--and it is one that seems to be genuine, not just part of his picking at Fordyce as he waits for the right moment to clean out the bank vault--makes him a fascinating and interesting character.

One of the biggest surprises is the film's ending. It is a far more modern one that I anticipated, and it's a great close for a great film. Another appealing aspect is that the film, which takes place just before Christmas, ultimately ends up like a sideways take on "A Christmas Carol," with Fordyce standing in for Scrooge and Hepburn being all the Christmas Ghosts in one smiling--yet very menacing--package.

"Cash on Demand" is one of the six movies featured in "Icons of Suspense: Hammer Films." It's worth the price of the almost all by itself.




For more reviews of movies starring Peter Cushing, visit The Peter Cushing Collection by clicking here.