Crescendo

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Alan Gibson; Produced by Michael Carreras for Hammer Films; Released in America by Warner Brothers. Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster and Alfred Shaughnessy; Photography by Paul Beeson; Edited by Chris Barnes; Music by Malcolm Williamson. Starring: Stefanie Powers, James Olson, Jane Lapotaire, Margaretta Scott and Joss Ackland.

Tight little, well-constructed old-fashioned "psycho" horror thriller, with Stefanie in an ultra-short white nightgown. Depicts interesting and ominous possessive/sexual relationships among the characters and features fine soft-focus, slow-motion nightmares, plus brief exploitation of Olson's paralyzed legs a la Tod Browning's "Freaks".

This is a thriller from England's Hammer studios and not a TV movie as some comments have suggested. A woman arrives at a country estate to write a thesis on a dead classical composer. While she's there, she becomes involved in a twisted tale involving infidelity and murder and finds her own life in jeopardy. Warner Brothers released this uncut and rated R but later cut it down to PG and used it on double bills with Dracula AD 72 and WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. WHEN DINOSAURS was cut down to a G rating and seeing as Warner's is releasing Dracula AD later this year, maybe they can get around to their other remaining Hammer properties. It would be great to see CRESCENDO AND DINOSAURS get uncut R1 DVD releases.

This is one of those films that rarely gets a good review. In fact it's been pretty much forgotten! It probably isn't one of Hammer's greatest achievements but it is by no means one of the worst. There are some rather uneventful scenes but I think they add to the suspense. The photography is very effective in places and the setting is quite haunting in a picturesque kind of way. The music which obviously is a major part of the story also adds to the more sinister scenes. The best performance comes from the seductive and eccentric maid, Lilliane (played by Jane Lapotaire) and Joss Ackland also puts in a fine performance as Carter (the butler/minder). It is not available on DVD and probably never will be, so if it's ever shown on TV it's certainly worth a look at.

American Susan Roberts (Stefanie Powers) goes to the south of France to research the late composer Henry Ryman. She is staying with his family. There are his widow wife Danielle (Margaretta Scott) and his wheelchair-bound son Georges (James Olson).

This is a Hammer horror. Like a lot of them, they're not actually scary. It's more a psychological thriller with some injected nudity to try to make it erotic. It doesn't get sexier than Stefanie Powers but the movie drags. The flashbacks are too clunky. I really don't like shooting the pool scenes in a studio. There is something inferior about this and it annoys me. Besides all that, the bigger sin is the lack of tension, thrills, or scares. I guess it has a few thrills in the final section but it's too little, too late.

Around this time, the type of movies that Hammer was most famous for were becoming out of style, so the studio desperately tried to tackle some other kind of movies, this being one of them. Few of these new efforts were successful financially or critically, and "Crescendo" was not an exception. There are two main problems with this movie. The first being that the movie unfolds at an extremely slow pace. In the first half hour of the movie, for example, pretty much nothing of significance happens. Eventually things do start to happen, but the movie not only still suffers from a glacial pace, there is the second problem with the movie. That being that the story is often head-scratching. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and even though the movie tries at the end to have a big surprise revelation, there are still plenty of unanswered questions as the end credits start to roll. I will say that the movie is decently produced, from the nice looking sets to the work with the camera, but that did little to stop me from starting to nod off long before the movie reached its end.