Boring

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Years after it first came out in the United Kingdom I remember seeing Four Sided Triangle on a double bill in America. It was one of those films I never forgot. I didn't know at the time it came from the celebrated British company Hammer Pictures which gave us usually a more gory type of science fiction.When cloning was finally achieved I remember that this was the first film I remember discussing the possibility which was fact in this film. For all the science fiction involved at heart Four Sided Triangle is a romantic and tragic film which begins in childhood of the protagonists.Children who grow up to be Barbara Payton, John Van Eyssen, and Stephen Murray are seen and its plain early on that Murray will be the odd man out in this group. Payton is the object of their affections, Van Eyssen is the son of the local squire and Murray the abused son of the town drunk. Fortunately for him the town doctor James Hayter takes an interest in Murray and Hayter narrates the film in flashback and it is through his eyes we see what unfolds.Both Van Eyssen and Murray go to college and study science and they perfect a 'duplicating' machine that can just duplicate inanimate things out of air. Good possibilities there. But Murray who pines for Payton wants to go further. She's married Van Eyssen, no fool she as he's got money and position. But Murray with the help of a reluctant Hayter experiments on living matter and then goes for the ultimate experiment. Amazingly enough Payton agrees to be duplicated.I can't go any further, but I'm sure your mind boggles with all kinds of alternative endings. The two Paytons are named Lena and Helen and I will say there is something that Murray forgot in all his experimentation. Four Sided Triangle while done on the cheap is a sensitively made film with good performances from the cast and will make you think about the issues of cloning.

Seeing this movie for the second time, I was struck by how clearly it anticipates Hammer's later Frankenstein films. The relationship of the two scientists, with one more eager than the other to pursue bolder experiments, the look of the laboratory, even specific camera angles of Bill at work, all foreshadow Curse of Frankensetin some four years later.One can see Terence Fisher's style taking shape, though the complete Hammer atmosphere has yet to be established. A major aspect is the seriousness with which the storyline and characters are enacted. Fisher remarked once that when they were filming Curse of Frankenstein, it was tempting at first to do it almost tongue in cheek, but he realized that the more serious the approach, the better it would work in the long run. This film uses that same serious attitude to make the fantastic story seem plausible. The actors make their characters completely believable, no matter how outlandish the plot gets.This is a minor but fascinating exercise in the development of the Hammer legacy, and well worth seeing for anyone interested in Fifties British science fiction.

Four Sided Triangle was one of the first science fiction movies from Hammer. Another early one was Spaceways, made around the same time as this.Two mad scientists and a woman make a machine that can make copies of anything and when one of them marries the woman, he decides to make a copy of her as he is in love with her too. He succeeds but the problem is, her copy isn't so keen on him. At the end, the barn where their lab is burns down leaving one of the women alive. But which one? This is rather interesting stuff from Hammer and is a good early attempt by them at sci-fi. Bigger things followed though...The cast includes Barbara Payton (Bride of the Gorilla), James Hayter (Tom Brown's Schooldays), Stephen Murray and John Van Eyssen.This movie is worth seeing. Excellent.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

**CAUTION: HUGE SPOILERS** In a rural English community, two friends called Bill (STEPHEN MURRAY) and Robin (JOHN VAN EYSSEN) invent a 'reproducer', a piece of scientific equipment which can recreate any object. They are aided in their work by Dr Harvey (JAMES HAYTER), the local GP and a close friend of theirs since they were children. During the celebrations of their fantastic discovery, Robin announces that he is to marry Lena (BARBARA PAYTON), a beautiful woman who both friends have fancied since they were children. Devastated, Bill decides to use the reproducer to create a clone of Lena for himself. However, as the clone is an exact replica, she shares the same thoughts and feelings as the real Lena.FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE is an absurd but nevertheless enjoyable science-fiction melodrama. Along with STOLEN FACE (see my review), it is one of the very few films from this chapter in the history of Hammer and Terence Fisher to indicate the direction that the company would take when they became Britain's best horror studio. Both pictures share the same theme of a well to do man perverting his skills in order to win the affections of the woman he loves. For example, in STOLEN FACE, Dr Philip Ritter used his knowledge of plastic surgery to recreate the face of concert pianist Alice Brent on a deformed petty criminal because he couldn't marry Alice because she was already spoken for. The very same reason why Bill in FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE felt compelled to use his scientific invention to duplicate Lena. Also both Dr Ritter and Bill were so obsessed in their love for women that they were both unable to see that disastrous consequences could result. Both characters from these two early movies are comparable to Baron Frankenstein in Fisher's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Even though Frankentein was more concerned with bringing the dead back to life than with his love life, he also was too oblivious to the certain doom that faced him when his creature became a criminal lunatic and he intended his creature to be perfect very much as Bill and Ritter intended theirs to be. FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE must also be the only b-picture in cinema history to have the courage of it's own lunatic convictions. This is thanks largely to Terence Fisher who opts to emphasize the causes and consequences of the characters' actions and the moral outcome as well. For instance at the end of the film the screen is filled with a biblical quote "You can either have joy or power you shall not have both". This follows the climax where Bill and one of the Lena's perish in a fire. However, one of them survived and the only way to judge between the clone and the real Lena was by a scar on the back of the latter's neck. Robin is overjoyed when its the real Lena, his wife, who has survived. This is the significance of Fisher's biblical quote. Robin had been tempted by power, but once the machine was destroyed in the blaze, his one opportunity for power was lost but he still had his wife and therefore he had joy but not power. This very much sets the standards for Fisher's skill as a director, whereas most of his films from this period such as MASK OF DUST or SPACEWAYS have nothing to commend them at all. In his best films for Hammer, he had that ability to take a ridiculous storyline and give it conviction by placing attention solely on his characters and the consequences and morality of what could happen if such things did occur in the world. The cast sensibly play it straight and all are suited to their roles with James Hayter shining as Dr Harvey who aids the men in their experiments but at the same time warns them of the dangers they face. John Van Eyssen who was later the head of Columbia Pictures would appear as Jonathan Harker in Fisher's classic Dracula (1958).