Taglines: The scream you can hear is your own.
Fright movie storyline. College student Amanda (Susan George) is babysitting for Helen and Dr. Cordell, watching after their young son at their large estate in the woods. When she arrives, the child, Tara, is already asleep; Helen and Dr. Cordell leave, Amanda makes tea in the kitchen, and is watched by a man through the window. After hearing odd noises, she is startled by the doorbell ringing, and finds her boyfriend Chris at the door. The two lounge on the couch before she makes him leave after Helen calls the home to check in. As Chris walks outside, he is attacked by a man hiding outside who clobbers him on the head.
Amanda continues to hear knocking noises and believes it is Chris playing a prank on her. She opens a window to reveal a silhouetted face staring back at her. Panicked, Amanda calls the restaurant where Helen is dining with her boyfriend Jim and their friend, Dr. Cordell. Helen is notified by the restaurant staff and goes to take the call, but the line goes dead after she picks up. Worried that her ex-husband, Brian, may have arrived at the home, Helen has Jim call the local psychiatric institute, who notify him that Brian escaped earlier in the night; Helen reveals in conversation that he had been institutionalized after he attempted to murder her; Dr. Cordell is his doctor.
At the front door, Amanda finds Chris, covered in blood; with him is Brian, who claims to be a neighbor who heard a commotion outside. Chris loses consciousness on the floor, and Brian consoles Amanda, who is distraught. At the house, Amanda grows disconcerted when Brian refuses to allow her upstairs, and begins calling her Helen. Realizing that he is Helen’s ex-husband, Amanda begins to play into Brian’s delusions, and repeatedly proclaims her love for him.
Brian eventually falls asleep, and Amanda attempts to leave the house with Tara, but is stopped by him in the foyer. Chris regains consciousness and attempts to fight Brian, but Brian murders him. Amanda flees out the front door just as police arrive at the home, but she is pulled back inside by Brian, who threatens her and Tara with a shard of glass. Helen and Jim arrive at the home, where Dr. Cordell and numerous policemen have gathered. A standoff ensues in which they attempt to coax him out of the house. Brian demands Helen come inside, but she agrees only on the condition that Amanda and Tara are let outside.
Fright is a 1971 British thriller film starring Susan George, Ian Bannen, Honor Blackman, and John Gregson. The film follows a babysitter who is terrorized one evening by her employer’s deranged ex-husband. Its original working titles were The Baby Minder and Girl in the Dark before it was titled Fright.
Film Review for Fright
So there she is, miles from any road, cut off from civilization in a Gothic mansion with bad wiring, an innocent baby upstairs, the telephone out of service, the rescue party up to its hubcaps in mud, and a homicidal sex maniac nibbling on her earlobe. A girl with a problem.
Her name is Amanda and she is the baby-sitter. She baby-sits in such out-of-the-way places that her father must have to deliver her in a Land Rover. England is a small island. For a Gothic mansion to be as isolated as this one, the grounds must violate the three-mile limit. And not even a gamekeeper to hear a scream.
Too bad, because Amanda is a crackerjack screamer. She keeps thinking she sees a sinister face through the windowpanes. It has wide eyes and a humorless grin. It rattles locks and taps its fingernails on the glass. Who could it be? Surely it couldn’t be Brian, Helen’s former husband, who was locked up in a mental prison after trying to strangle Helen and kill the baby? Surely not. Because Brian is safely locked up miles away. That’s why Helen is out on a date tonight with her new fiance.
Well, we have been down this lonely, twisting road before. We have felt the creepers brush against our face, and we have heard the sound of panting in the forest, and we have heard the twigs snap and the pebbles rattle. We don’t have to be Jimmy the Greek to give 10-to-1 odds that Brian is moping around somewhere out there in the night.
Look at it this way. If the homicidal Brian weren’t out there in the night, what could the movie be about? Amanda would be left looking like a fool. The baby would get no sleep because of the screams from downstairs. And the police sergeant would be left holding the phone and repeating “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?” for no purpose at all.
England is a long way ahead of us at this business of things out there in the night. Our houses in America are smaller and less complicated. Sinister noises in the night turn out to be malfunctioning automatic garage-door openers. But Gothic mansions have dozens of windows, countless creaks and not a door that doesn’t groan. And the trees are planted close to the house on purpose, so that their branches can scratch against the eaves.
The English are also ahead of us in the baby-sitter department. Amanda is played by Susan George, who wears a cashmere sweater that is unbuttoned, by actual count, five times during the movie. It is also buttoned back up five times, so stay calm; this is only rated PG. (In an R movie, it would be buttoned back up four times, and in an X movie, of course, it wouldn’t be cashmere.)
Because Susan George is awfully good at playing threatened, innocent, blond victims (cf. her rape scene in “Straw Dogs”), and because Ian Bannen makes a suitable maniacal and homicidal killer, “Fright” is a passably good thriller. It is a disappointment, though, coming from Peter Collinson, the talented young British director who made “The Penthouse” in 1967. Now there was a real thriller. There they were, the victims, 38 floors up, and the telephone wasn’t installed and the elevator didn’t work…
Fright (1971)
Directed by: Peter Collinson
Starring: Ian Bannen, Susan George, Honor Blackman, John Gregson, George Cole, Dennis Waterman, Tara Collinson, Maurice Kaufmann, Michael Brennan, Roger Lloyd Pack, Brook Williams
Screenplay by: Tudor Gates
Production Design by: Disley Jones
Cinematography by: Ian Wilson
Film Editing by: Raymond Poulton
Costume Design by: Jean Fairlie
Makeup Department: George Blackler, Pearl Tipaldi
Music by: Harry Robinson
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: British Lion Films (United Kingdom), Allied Artists (United States)
Release Date: November 1971
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