Inn of the Frightened People

After the funeral of their young daughter, the family learns that the man who was suspected for rape and murder is let go because of the lack of evidence. The father, along with his older son and friend whose daughter was also killed by the same man devise a plan to kidnap and hopefully get the confession out of him. However things turn bad, when one slip after another leads to them turning on each other and having second thoughts that maybe they've got the wrong man.

There's potential there, but the compact, stiff script doesn't really tap into it enough and leaves plenty of the looming heavy-handed themes high and dry. Emotionally the film makes a huge dent, but more so in a bleakly intense and serious tone. The film itself is pretty fundamental and scandalously melodramatic as it rears it ugly head into brusque crudeness. Watching the characters lose control of the situation, and going on to tear each other apart as the misguided kidnapping triggers a disastrous domino effect is strangely gripping and at times rather uneasy. One interesting moment sees an unusual state of sexual tension between two characters, which has you thinking, was there something there before it erupted. Maybe it goes too over-the-top, and in doing so loses some creditability. Sidney Hayers' direction is efficiently workman-like, with little in the way of style, but he manages to draw up a tautly knitted atmosphere and milks out a few ample shocks. The violence and sexual context might not be explicit, but it's gritty and in what matters effective. Ken Hodges' sturdy camera-work is intrusively lensed and Eric Rogers' miss-guided musical score comes off daftly staged. The performances fall into the overacting category, but come off committed. Joan Collins who's no stranger to that tag, is gracefully fine and gives it her all. An edgy James Booth scorns about, and delivers a serviceable job with a complicated character trying to overcome his anger, which eventuates to guilt. Ray Barrett, Tom Marshall, Kenneth Griffith and the gorgeously rich Sinéad Cusack also star with tolerable turns.

There's flaws, but it's decently done to make it a passable cliff-hanger thriller.

Surprisingly, upon watching this, I found that I had never seen it before and that it was most enjoyable, if a little distasteful. The locations, shops and house and pub interiors are most evocative and if some are sets they are very good ones. Joan Collins is also surprisingly good but then she really only has to play at being a barmaid. Gripping from the start, this is a really well paced and intelligently told thriller. Things lurch a little two thirds in but by then we have bought into the rather lurid tale and it was always going to leave something of a bad taste anyway, with little girls being taken on their way to school, so what harm a little incest along the way. Just as the film seems to be loosing pace we have a surprisingly and confrontational ending that leaves you wondering just who the intended audience was for this. Well worth a watch for the open minded.

Joan Collins stars in this well-crafted British suspense-drama about a grieving family who take the law into their own hands and seek revenge on the man who raped and murdered their young daughter. Sidney Hayers' direction is smooth, the cast(particularly Collins and James Booth) is terrific, and there are some effective shock and suspense sequences, but it's all been done before, and it's pretty dreary and unpleasant stuff.

This film starts out at a fair pace,but then the writer must have run out of fresh ideas and cobbled together the rest of the lcklustre plot.What is very strange is that top starred Joan Collins disappears well before the end.

Stalwart British filmmaker, Sidney Hayers relentlessly raises the teeth-grinding tension to a murderously-fevered pitch in his strikingly brutal, emotionally raw, uniquely British 70s suburban revenge classic, 'Terror in The House aka 'Revenge!'. A young girl is abducted and killed by a vile-minded predator, and once the victim's grief-stricken family furiously enact their righteous revenge they descend inexorably into a dismal existential miasma of blinding rage, bloody retribution and crippling emotional despond! Which is mother's milk to the likes of me!

Director, Hayers coaxes tremendously vivid, full-blooded performances from his singularly game cast of film & TV icons, the scintillatingly sleek Glamourpuss, Joan Collins, and James Booth were rarely better, with esteemed character actor, Kenneth Griffith twitchily putting in a career best as the disgustingly seedy sex-fiend, Seely! This is a long-cherished, excitingly mounted, unflinchingly dark British psychodrama that I never once expected to see so gloriously manifested on Blu-ray, and in this delightfully pristine, lovingly restored version,'Revenge!' is thoroughly deserving of an equally brand new, hopefully no less adoring audience! With an exemplary script by 'Saint' screenwriter, John Kruse, sterling performances, an engagingly grim tone, plus a fine score by, Eric Rogers, this gritty, downbeat 70s thriller remains one remarkably tough thrill-spiller that has lost little of its formidable dramatic impact.