Crescendo (1970)
Directed by Alan Gibson

Film Review

Crescendo is among the least well-known of Hammer's run of psycho-thrillers, one that marks the transition from the gimmicky thrillers of the early 1960s (mostly rip-offs of H.G. Clouzot's Les Diaboliques) to the more graphic shockers of the 1970s, the forerunner of the modern slasher movie.  The film was originally to have been made in the mid-1960s as a vehicle for Joan Crawford, directed by Michael Reeves before he made his name with Witchfind General (1968).  Alfred Shaughnessy's script was picked up a few years later and rewritten by Hammer regular Jimmy Sangster, incorporating elements from many of his previous psycho-thrillers, most obviously Taste of Fear (1961).  Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre are likely to have been two other significant influences on the plot.

With Reeves out of the running, the task of directing the film fell to Alan Gibson, a Canadian director in his early thirties who had already started to make his mark in television and had directed a segment in Hammer's anthology film Journey to Midnight (1968).  Of the directors who worked on Hammer's horror films, Gibson is the one who is probably least well regarded, justly so considering the mess he made of the studio's last two Dracula films - Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973).  Gibson's forte was television and it's probably no accident that Crescendo, the best film he made for Hammer, looks like it was made for a television.  The film opens with a profoundly haunting slow-motion dream sequence filmed in the Camargue in southern France, the location of Hammer's earlier psycho-thriller Maniac (1963).  After the opening credits, the action is confined to a studio mock-up of a provençal house, something that gives the film an oppressively claustrophobic feel, although it does make the similarities with Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) a little too evident.

The film's stark TV-style minimalism is even more apparent in its small dramatis personae, which comprises five characters and gives the film an unusually intimate feel.  Having played the "woman in peril" in one Hammer psycho-thriller, namely Fanatic (1965), Stefanie Powers should have known better than to agree to reprise the role in this film, particularly as the script offers her even less in the way of character depth.  All that the future star of the hit television series Hart to Hart has to do is to replicate Janet Leight's role in Psycho (1960), befriending a creepy mummy's boy played with understated menace by James Olson, who is far more effective here than he was on Hammer's earlier sci-fi disaster Moon Zero Two (1969).

An aura of subtle malevolence surrounds all of the four inmates of the strange menagerie into which Powers is inexplicably drawn, particularly Margaretta Scott's unconvincingly benign hostess, an old school matriarch whose persona compels obedience and whose ire is doubtless something quite terrible.  From She Who Must Be Obeyed we move swifly on to She Who Must Be Surrendered To, namely a super-sensual  French maid (played by an unbelievably sultry Jane Lapotaire, sizzling in her first screen role) who would not be out of place in a super-sordid French porn movie, of the kind that French governments love to ban. There's no room for subtlety here, just a slutty nymphomaniac who flaunts her raw Gallic sensuality as if it were a weapon of mass destruction, every gesture, every look resembling an abridged version of the Kama Sutra.  This distinctly old quartet is completed by Joss Ackland's sinister 'man in black', a stock character thrown in to muddy the water of an exceedingly shallow pond.

Crescendo is a slow burner that, frustratingly, doesn't quite live up to its promise, although there are plenty of spine-chilling moments along the way (most shamelessly lifted from Psycho) and the performances are generally above par for a film of this kind (Scott, Lapotaire and Olsen make a superbly seductive trio).  Some tentative nudity and flashes of slasher-style horror intermittently break through the controlled tension of the lethargically paced narrative, offering a tantalising glimpse of where Hammer would take the horror genre in subsequent years in a bid to keep up with the competition.  But it's pretty tame stuff by the standards of 1970, a case perhaps of Hammer resting on its Laurels.  When the shock revelation does come in the final reel its surprise value is minimal (particularly if you have recently watched Taste of Fear) and the references to Psycho ultimately become wearisome.  If you have never seen a psycho-thriller before, Crescendo is probably as good as any you are likely to encounter, and to give it its due it is strangely compelling.  However, there is one question that remains unanswered.  How was it that Jane Lapotaire didn't end up a huge porn star?

Film Synopsis

American music student Susan Roberts willingly accepts an invitation to stay at the home of Danielle Ryman in the south of France to gather material for the thesis she is writing on her hostess's husband, a world famous composer.  She strikes up an awkward friendship with Danielle's son Georges, who is crippled from the waist down after an accident some years previously, putting paid to a promising sporting career.  Georges suffers from recurring nightmares in which he is shot dead by a man resembling him as he attempts to make love to his girlfriend, Catherine.  His physical and mental torment are eased by heroin administered to him by his mother and their French housemaid Lillianne.  The latter enjoys the power she has over the wheelchair-bound young man and is adamant that she will one day become the mistress of the house.  Susan finds herself drawn to Georges but he warns her that she must go away as his mother's reasons for inviting her may not be as benign as they seem.  When Lillianne disappears mysteriously, the music student begins to realise that something is amiss...