Well Deserved Praise

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Really Surprised!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Belle Adams (Hayley Mills) catches a lift with a local driver, amidst rumours of a maniac on the loose. Seems like someone has broken out of the nearby Greenwood Sanatorium. Interesting that the local reports don't specify whether the escapee is male or female. Anyway, the driver quite candidly feels he has the right to attempt to rape her as a form of 'settling the fare'. When she is rescued by a tipsy Simon Ward (as Steven Slade), he tells her 'she asked for it.' It is strange to see former child star Hayley Mills as a focus for lust among the men (she is, after all, 29 at this time). And smoking ciggies as well! Her wholesome image endures however and Adams is either very naïve or very brave to be travelling alone during such times on what appears to be a whim. Several flashbacks throw suspicion on both her and Slade, and it is good to see dependable Peter Jeffrey playing another rogue.They stop at a petrol station, where the young female attendant flirts with Slade. He has an eye for the ladies and his behaviour is a little odd. Not too surprising to find that she is murdered shortly after. Slade and Adams have temporarily split up during this time, leaving them both suspects. Unruffled, they reunite after Slade has apparently 'made a phone call', and continue their journey.From then on, it is one mishap after another. Belle meets up with the eccentric Malcolm Robarts (Sterling Hayden), who is clearly not going to let a thirty year age-gap stop him trying to woo Belle.The British locations are wonderful, all winter trees, barren roads, dilapidated petrol stations and, latterly, a windswept seaside town. Directed rather like a television movie by the prolific Sidney Hayes (who went on to have great success directing American series including 'Baywatch', 'Knight Rider' and 'Magnum PI', and his previous brush with horror was 1960's 'Circus of Horrors'), who wrings as much intrigue and tension out of the low budget. Interestingly when, during the finale, one character kills another character (you'll get no names out of me) there is no music, just the sound of taut rope being stretched around the throat of the victim.This is a terrific, sparse road-tale of psychological horror with a tiny cast of excellent actors, set in a bleak world where most people you meet are either sex-maniacs or hooligans. I always felt that Simon Ward never really had quite the success he deserved. The wonderful Mills moved away from acting for a few years after 'Deadly Strangers' before returning to television in 1981 for the highly-regarded 'Flame Trees of Thika', which lead to a renewed interest in the profession.

I don't think any normal person would claim this film's opening scenes are pregnant with possibility. There are all the symptoms of a cheap horror flick -- the lurid colors, the tinny electronic score, the conceit of the killer's point of view, the murders -- three of them -- before the opening credits roll and one murder immediately after. The first killing has a pretty British nurse killed in a hospital after being injected with some kind of potion, gasping, legs kicking, underpants showing. Night time. Few lights, mostly red or a bleached, ghoulish green, and blinding white. Ominous. All portending a ride through the Haunted House at Disneyland.We never get to see the psychotic killer during his or her escape from the booby hatch. So who could it be? There are myriad red herrings. Simon Ward, "Young Winston," looks awfully suspicious when we first see him at a roadside stop, playing a slot machine and staring at himself in the mirror. Would any sane person look at himself in a mirror? I know I wouldn't. Then there's Hayley Mills -- oh, so innocent; maybe TOO innocent, with her plump lower lip and those shapely knees. The director, by the way, seems to have a thing for knees. Well, in Hayley Mills' case, he can't be blamed. And, after all, Luis Bunuel was into shoes and Walt Disney spent a lot of time around animals.Then there is Sterling Hayden who brings a bit of color to a familiar story of hitch hikers and maniacs. He's dressed like Captain Ahab and has a bushy gray beard of a retired Civil War general. He puts more energy into his brief role as an old blowhard than he has in any other performance, outside of "Dr. Strangelove," where the effort was masked by his real acting skills.Among the felicities, Mills' knees aside, there are those cute British phone booths. I don't know why America can't make its phone booths out of wood and paint them a bright crimson. They look sturdy, and comfortable enough to spend hours in. Among the weaknesses, well, an example. At a gas station, Ward happens upon a window through which he sees a young woman undressing and getting into what appears to be a uniform shirt. While the camera gapes at her figure, there are interpolated cuts, three or four of them, to the gigantic close up of Ward's single blue eye. The effect is almost surreal but that isn't what the director and editor intended. They just did it because one of them, seized by a brain storm, said something like, "Shouldn't we have a big close up of the actor's eye, so that we know he's still peeping?" Imagine Hitchcock cutting back and forth from Janet Leigh's undressing to a bulging close up of Anthony Perkins' eyeball.There are flashbacks heralded by slow camera movement into a close up, followed by a dissolve, harp music, the flashback with its edges blurred. Both actors suffer from them. Mill's are about her happy youth, riding a horse along the beach, until we reach the part where she was sexually abused as a child. (Zzzz.) Ward's are about impotence. The logic of the tale is flawed; Ward and Mills quarrel when they first meet, but before you know it, and without adumbration, Mills is actively protecting him -- because he might have accidentally killed an aggressive motorcyclist.The ending emerges from the shadows and the identity of the murdering lunatic is revealed. If it's a surprise, it's only because some earlier incidents have made this ending impossible.

Deadly Strangers is quite a basic storyline with twist, the dialogue is a little flat, Chat up lines involving ostrich eggs for example.. The story rumbles along with a watchable quality and being a road movie the pace does pick up in the chase scenes. Though towards the end the chase in the woods tends to drop the action. One thing that is well worth noticing is the use of small mount cameras, quite innovative then. In many respects this film is more a car spotters dream.. If your into 70's British cars you will be pausing the DVD more times than you can imagine!Overall Hayley ,Simon and Sterling carry this script off,but the most surprising performance comes from the Maxi!!

Guenot - I took that scene to mean that Hayley went into the station and killed the female attendant. If you remember the scene before, she saw the girl flirting with Simon Ward while she pumped the gasoline. Hayley had a weird look on her face, some kind of jealousy. There was no indication of rape that I saw, just that the girl was murdered. The murder wasn't shown purposely so that you wouldn't know who did it, but would suspect Simon (red herring). Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that Hayley did it, then climbed back into the car before Simon returned.Simon Ward did a great job playing James Herriot in the All Creatures Great and Small movie. And good old Sterling Hayden still knew how to turn in a great performance near the end of his career. Of course, all of Hayley's male fans are very appreciative of her bare bottom bathtub scene. All in all, it was a very good film and I liked the Hitchcock feel that ran throughout it. Recommended to all suspense movie fans.