Taste of Fear (1961)

Taste of Fear is a British horror film first released in 1961, directed by Seth Holt.  The film stars Susan Strasberg, Ronald Lewis, Ann Todd, Christopher Lee and John Serret.  It has also been released under the title: Scream of Fear.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Not long after the dead body of a young woman is fished out of a lake in Switzerland, Penny Appleby arrives at her father’s house in the south of France, hoping to make a reconciliation with her estranged father  Penny is surprised to learn that her father is away, but her stepmother, Jane, gives her a friendly welcome.  Penny is wheelchair-bound, having damaged her spine in a horse-riding accident, and so is dependent on her hostess and her chauffeur, Bob.  On her first night in the house, Penny goes exploring and, to her horror, sees her father sitting in a catatonic state in the summer house.  She alerts Bob, but when they return the old man is no longer there.  When the incident is repeated over the next few days, Penny suspects that she is the victim of a plot to drive her out of her mind.  Convinced that her mother is the culprit, in league with the mysterious Dr Gerrard, Penny enlists Bob’s help in searching the house for her father’s body.  She finds far more than she bargained for...

It was the phenomenal success of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) which motivated the British company Hammer Films to make Taste of Fear, the first of its psycho-thrillers.  The film’s popularity would help establish the sub-genre as a major strand of Britain cinema over the ensuing decade, paving the way for today’s slasher movies.   Hammer had, by this stage, already scored some notable successes in the Gothic horror genre, with its reinterpretations of Universal’s classic horror offerings Dracula and Frankenstein.  The psycho-thriller would provide a lucrative sideline for a film production company that was fast becoming a world leader in the horror genre.

Taste of Fear is undoubtedly the best of Hammer’s psycho-thrillers, a suspenseful, ingenious and relentlessly creepy thriller that clearly owes much to H.G. Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1958).   The plot may not be entirely original but there are enough red herrings and diversions to keep the spectator guessing, courtesy of Jimmy Sangster, the ace screenwriter who penned several of Hammer’s best films.  Sangster’s Hammer offerings range from the first of the company’s Gothic horrors, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), to the groundbreaking thriller Nightmare (1964).  Sangster would later rework this film as Fear in the Night (1972).  
 
The film was directed by Seth Holt, a former editor who had previously only made one film, the Ealing crime drama Nowhere to Go (1958).  Although his filmmaking career was brief (tragically curtailed by a heart attack when he was 47), Holt was undoubtedly one of Britain’s most creative directors.  As can be seen in this and his two subsequent Hammer films – The Nanny (1965) and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) – Holt knew instinctively how to compose a shot for maximum visual and emotional impact, and this is why his films are so inordinately compelling and stylish.

The many chills and shocks that Taste of Fear offers the unwary spectator are all the more effective because of  Seth Holt’s inventive direction and Douglas Slocombe’s dreamlike photography.  The recurring appearances of the heroine’s dead father become increasingly horrific, culminating in the remarkable underwater sequence, which probably stands as the most frightening two minutes of any Hammer film.  The almost noir-like cinematography imbues the film with a stifling sense of confinement, effectively amplifying the mounting paranoia of the main protagonist.  When the climax comes, it is both shocking and genuinely surprising.

The film doesn’t disappoint on the acting front either.  The leads - Susan Strasberg, Ronald Lewis and Ann Todd – bring a stark realist edge to the drama which helps in building the sense of neurotic tension.  After his great success in Hammer’s previous Dracula (1958), Christopher Lee returns to the Hammer fold in a surprisingly effective character role, convincingly playing a sinister French doctor (and sounding remarkably like Charles Boyer).   The spellbinding contributions from these four performers draw our attention from one or two imperfections in the script (which are only noticeable on a second or third viewing) and help to make Taste of Fear one of Hammer’s most riveting thrillers.

© James Travers 2010

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