Keeping a TV recording of the very good The Borderlands by the side,I started look for another title to watch for a British Horror double bill. Catching me completely by surprise,my dad revealed a rarely mentioned Hammer Horror he had picked up,which led to me turning paranoiac. The plot:After the deaths of their parents in an air-crash the ties that bind the Ashby family together start to snap. Sinking into depression with the rest of his brothers and sisters, Tony Ashby appears to end it all by jumping off a cliff into the sea,an act which none of the other family members see take place.Taken care of by Aunt Harriet,Simon starts becoming increasingly aware of how fragile his sister Eleanor is in the mansion. Wanting all the inheritance for himself,Simon begins playing games that get Eleanor to question her sanity.Fearing that she's starting to see ghosts,Eleanor and the rest of the family discover that "dead" Tony is actually alive. As everyone appears to accept that he is telling the truth,"Tony" starts playing a paranoiac game… View on the film: Cracking under the pressure of her family and the re-appearance of Tony, Janette Scott gives a great performance as Eleanor,whose stuck in the mansion status leads Scott to getting Eleanor to lunge out in violently fearful,and abrasively passionate ways. Bringing light into the Ashby family,Alexander Davion gives a sharp, icy performance as Tony,whose handsome looks Davion sands down to a reveal calculating bite. Joined by a simmering Sheila Burrell as Aunt Harriet,Oliver Reed gives a cracking performance as Simon,who Reed balances between wrapping cruel mind-games round Eleanor, and falling down to the madness of the Ashby family.Beginning the themes that would re-appear in the excellent Amicus Giallo The Psychopath, director Freddie Francis & cinematographer Arthur Grant blend the Gothic smoke of Hammer Horror with dazzling Film Noir stylisation, with the isolation of the Ashby mansion being reflected in water and deranged family members spying on each other in shadows. Backed by a spidery score from Elisabeth Lutyens, Francis brings frightful doubt into the mansion with crisp side shots giving the impression of ghosts/mysterious figures,and a digging deep inside the foundation,allow Francis to unmask fiery secrets.Loosely based on Josephine Tey's novel,the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster wonderfully uses each Ashby family member to set the other one off to psychological horror,from the fury of mourning from Harriot,to the screams of Eleanor and the cackling weirdness of Simon. Whilst the ending is too neat and tidy,Sangster brilliantly makes Tony a Noir loner trapped in a horror nightmare,with the "love" Eleanor has for Tony edging towards a risqué undertone,and the ambiguity of this Tony being real or fake making each of the Ashby's feel paranoiac.

Freddie Francis directed this psychological suspense tale that stars Oliver Reed as Simon Ashby, a psychotic alcoholic determined to inherit his wealthy family's estate by driving his sister Eleanor(played by Janette Scott) insane. He secretly killed their brother Tony, and tries to convince his sister through sinister means that his ghost haunts their mansion, but when a mysterious man(played by Alexander Davion) saves Eleanor's life, and claims to be Tony, Simon must dispose of both of them, or at least expose "Tony" as a fraud... Good atmosphere and performances are undermined by the far-fetched plot that doesn't quite ring true, despite some eerie moments.

I have a soft spot for this Hammer psycho-thriller – at 12 years old it was the first film I'd seen which I noted down as being worth watching again, and which over the following decades I dutifully have. It was shown on UK ITV's long-running Appointment With Fear on Friday night 15th October 1971, before the ATV Midlands linkman Peter Tomlinson started devaluing the experience with toy panda's et al. Looking back through rose tinted spectacles at this rather nasty film it obviously made a huge impression on me, but what of now?A dysfunctional household sitting on a half million pound fortune seem to have plenty of problems: a suspiciously sympathetic nurse who could have a few screws loose looking after a feeble minded girl apparently on the verge of madness while her madly impetuous arrogant brother drinks himself to death (Oliver Reed of course), all overseen by a bizarre aunt. Even the family lawyer and his son have axes to grind; then at last along comes someone who seems open and likable, the only trouble being he's supposed to have committed suicide 8 years before. Which of them is honest, crooked or both? Good acting captured by atmospheric black and white filming, with exceptional production values when you remember it was made on Hammer's usual shoestring budget. It holds the attention well until the climax when with 3 minutes left it unfortunately veers into contrived melodrama - as you watch more movies you lose count of the number of times you see story resolution in this flame - sorry, lame manner. Reed put the Ham in Hammer in those last minutes, even if he was performing a unique Danse Macabre with his ultimate skeleton in the closet!However, still excellent admirable stuff with many plot twists and turns to savour and enjoy, and still on my Watch Again list.

The first of Hammer's psycho thrillers but not one it's best. Maybe I shouldn't have watched it so soon after the excellent 'Nightmare', or indeed before it but there you go. Similar to 'Nightmare' in that it was scripted by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Freddie Francis, and again a plot revolving around who is mad, and who isn't, the film is only effective occasionally. There's cash to be inherited and Oliver Reed wants it, and he doesn't want to share it with his sister, Jeanette Scott. When Scott apparently sees her long-dead brother at a memorial service for her parents, Reed sees this as the excuse he needs to declare her insane and keep all the cash for himself. But to throw a spanner in the works, the dead brother turns up...... This is a competent film but needed a bit more. Francis makes the film look too bright, a few more dark corners and shadows would have helped build the atmosphere some. Reed's acting doesn't shift from 'intense' mode, which is fine but a bit more ambiguity would have helped in this type of film. The plot plods along at times and could have done with being tightened; there's also plot lines that simply disappear as if Sangster had forgotten about them. At the end of the day a mediocre Hammer. Watch Nightmare to see how it should have been done.