Straight on Till Morning

The swinging sixties are coming to an end in swinging London but there are still some hang overs from the 1950s and still plenty of odd ball characters. Pregnancy outside of marriage was still much looked down upon and under the guise of the 'flower children' it was perfectly possible for even homicidal maniacs to not seem out of place. Rita Tushingham is as great as ever and this much under rated actress puts in one of her more endearing performances. Shane Briant is eerily convincing as the psycho and the rest of the cast including James Bolam are all fine. Some decent location shooting is always appreciated around this time and here we get a couple of boutiques and some very moody stuff around the then recently completed South Bank complex. Plenty of surprises and well worth catching as one of the most unusual hammer movies.

In STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING, a very naive, pregnant woman named Brenda (Rita Tushingham) leaves her mother's home, and sets off on her own. She winds up getting a job at a trendy clothing shop, of the "hippie" variety. This introduces her to a world that she's never experienced.

Meanwhile, Peter (Shane Briant), a young man about town, appears to be up to something. Something dark and deadly.

Circumstances arise that bring these two people together.

This is a rather strange film, with a deceptively quiet atmosphere. It's obvious from the beginning that Peter is a psychopath, and that anyone who comes in contact with him is in danger. There are some scenes with Peter that are quite disturbing. While there's really no gore, what is implied is enough to get the point across. Over time, we're shown his background through fleeting flashbacks. Peter is a terrifying guy.

Brenda is clueless throughout. She's both sympathetic and infuriating by turns. You may find yourself yelling at the screen!

A solid, later offering from Hammer Productions...

This is not your usual Hammer House film.

The Brenda character is perhaps one of the strangest in cinema. She's desperately naive to the point of delusion. Los in her own fantasy world of fairytale endings she struggles to engage in the realy of her new life in London. The dog kidnapping scene where Brenda transform into a fairytale character of her own creation is a perfect example of this.

The weirdness and disconnectedness of the characters of swinging early 70's party scene reflects the lucid dream like quality of the film. The film occasionally jumps to alternative scenes, sexual, ordinary, her mother back home, they all suggest that Brenda's decisions could have led her down a different path.

When it seems that Brenda's bizarre plan to find a husband is starting to pay off, she stumbles into another person's fairytale. Peter offers Brenda what she wants but in exchange he takes her personality, renaming her as a character in his own delusional fantasy.

What follows is a superbly sinister and uneasy relationship. The tension between Peter and Brenda moves between a kind of marriage of convenience, dark sexuality and childish fantasy.

A brilliant example of 70's British horror. Well worth a watch.

A conventionally offbeat early seventies psycho-thriller alive with zooms the way today's are with steadicam in which Rita Tushingham is a waif from the provinces who is abused by a smoothly misogynistic control freak upon her arrival in the big city the way she was seven years earlier in 'The Knack'.

It's quickly obvious were all this is going, but the vivid location work around Earl's Court and a good cast (most of them - like a feral Annie Ross in huge hair and a tiny dress - actually seen only fleetingly) keeps you watching; despite rather than because of it's gimmick in constantly referencing Peter Pan.

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.