Good concept, poorly executed.

A different way of telling a story

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

SPOILERS AHEAD!! Honestly, I could not determine whether a certain blond/blonde, floppy-haired person was male or female! My opinion during the opening minutes of this strange film kept going back and forth. Very odd. Of course, it was 1972. A hideous screeching, high-pitched yell also disturbed me during the early minutes, apparently a road accident with a sporty car, but we see only a tantalising fleeting glimpse. Then there was the overhead scene, looking down on two naked bodies engaged in sex, with the camera quickly zooming in fairly slowly on his backside as he went about his business. Many, many other attempts to be arty and edgy, just about all of them silly and amateurish, quick scenes, lil snippits, angles, bits of music, sound effects, can't determine what is going on.So what WAS going on? The strikingly-unusual-looking Rita Tushingham was leaving home... worried mom sees her off as she departs lovely Liverpool for luscious London. Rita drops a bag of something, picks up the bits, the bag is knocked again by someone, spilling contents. Wow! This is some kinda deep-meaning flick, shades of 2001 and Marienbad. Or is it just 01 and BAD? Btw, Rita's looks I find very attractive, though distracting because I spend a lot of time looking at and analysing her face, including that mole by her mouth (her mother's mole is bigger and on her cheek, incidentally). And Rita's prominent nose, those big, wide, staring, penetrating eyes, those remarkable gnashers, all demand attention and take you away from the story, the plot, if there is one: there IS, isn't there? Yes, I think so, 'coz she's meeting lotsa fascinating folk. Back to the male/female character, with a clock ticking loudly and oddball echoing voices, now we see Rita writing, then looking at a burning oil painting. Huh? What the hell is going on? The IMDb rating is 6.1, so this MUST be a good movie. What am I missing? Oh! We're back to the naked couple, gal gasping. Now we're at party with raucous nasty music. Yeah, what IS going on??? Things are heating up? No, doesn't look promising. Rita's looking for a feller and a drink, breaks a cork off in the neck of a wine bottle. Gosh! This cinematic experience is moving into high gear. Love 1972. Attractive but ascerbic blonde girl tells John Lennon lookalike guy to piss off. Rita has trouble getting fags from a cig machine down the road. There must be some kind of deep meaning here, just can't figure it out, sorry. Rita, with Rothman cancer sticks, goes back to apartment, starts crying at what she discovers. Mournful song dribbles on......... THIS is a real motion picture? WHY? What does it all mean? Why am I bothering to waste any more time on it? Do I really care whether the blond/blonde is a guy or a gal? It's a guy, btw, with light makeup, very heavy darkened eyebrows. I suspect he's a baddie."Paul Andrews", an IMDb member since September 2001, a "Top Reviewer" who has reviewed more than 2,500 films, gives this movie "Straight On Till Morning" 1/10. Yes, he certainly is a top reviewe in my book, for sure. He refers to this stinker as "Hammer's worst"Well, I cannot recommend this moo-vee either, but I give it 2/10 because of Rita Tushingham and the blond/blonde. Maybe you'll like it if you enjoy oddities and have nothing else to do. Me? I'm going to fire off a few emails to my correspondents, choose my clothes for tomorrow, place a few bids online, make a cappuccino, then go to bed. Good Night, Rita. Hope you have fun with your friends and your maybe baby and your cigarettes and... whatever ! Oh HELL ! Someone's been attacked with what looks like a box cutter blade. This is a violent one; it's Hammer's worst. Good Night.

Straight on Till Morning is certainly one of the most atypical films that Hammer Studios ever produced. It begins like a social realist kitchen-sink drama, replete with fragmented snapshot montage editing similar to Ken Loach's Up the Junction – incidentally, a film remade by Peter Collinson the director of this film. And for the first third of the film it seems like this is going to be another such gritty drama, however, it takes an unexpected detour when it suddenly turns into a psychological thriller. It's an extremely unusual combination that isn't entirely successful but definitely interesting. In actual fact it's one of Hammer's more intriguing efforts in my opinion because it's so weird.The story is about a naive young girl called Brenda who moves to London to try and find a man. She winds up staying with a very strange foppish man called Peter who is in fact a serial killer of women.The social realism and montage heavy editing is entirely at odds to anything else Hammer ever put out. This is a film that has way more in common with the British New Wave than it does with anything previously produced by the famous studio. None of the characters are particularly likable, with the men in particular very creepy and/or deeply unpleasant people with appalling haircuts. The central relationship between Brenda and Peter is, to put it mildly, bizarre. It's difficult to see what either of them sees in each other; while Peter's strange issues with beauty are a little hard to fathom. Nevertheless, I thought this one was not bad at all. It wasn't predictable in the way that most Hammer films tend to be. It was pretty bleak and overall a commendably uncommercial offering. Definitely worth a look if you like downbeat psychological dramas.

Fans of bleak, late 60s/early 70s British cinema might enjoy this sadistic psycho-thriller -- probably the most atypical release from Hammer ever. Rita Tushingham stars as an empty-headed Liverpudlian who escapes from the claustrophobia of her mother's flat only to land in the arms of psychotic Shane Briant who has an ugliness fixation. The DVD release from Anchor Bay looks great although the mono sound is a bit muddled. Downbeat ending doesn't really deliver the goods and I can't tell if Rita's makeover is supposed to be deliberately funny or not. Opening 10 minutes are great but director Collinson abandons the film's earlier, psychedelic editing style once Tushingham and Briant hook up. Still worth catching for the 70s period costumes and sets.

Rita Tushingham is an intensely vulnerable actress. In her early classics, such as The Trap and A Taste Of Honey, directors used these distinctive qualities to capture cinematic eloquence. In this Hammer film, these traits become parodies of themselves, and as a result, Rita and those around her, are merely grotesque. This is especially true of the strikingly pretty psychotic for whom she falls, played indifferently by Shane Briant. For all its faults, the film does have two remarkably clever scenes, but they are no so good as to warrant exposing yourself to 90 minutes of this sewage.