Hysteria (1965)
Directed by Freddie Francis

Film Review

By the time Hysteria was released in the summer of 1965, the psycho-thriller genre had pretty well run its course and Hammer's association with the genre would end abruptly with its next film, The Nanny (1965), allowing the company to concentrate on its still popular run of Gothic horror films and similar lurid fantasies.  Hammer would make a belated return to the genre in 1970 with Crescendo, just as the company's future was starting to look decidedly uncertain.  Not content with reworking the plot of Hammer's previous psycho-thrillers, most visibly Maniac (1963), Hysteria also includes a shameless nod to the film that set the genre bandwagon in motion, Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with a shower stabbing scene.

Let down by its formulaic plot, Hysteria is the last and least interesting of the three psycho-thrillers directed for Hammer by Freddie Francis, who had previously distinguished himself with two of the genre's best entries, Paranoiac (1963) and Nightmare (1964) before lending his talents to rival company Amicus on the memorable The Skull (1965) and horror anthology films such as Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965).  Francis's attempts to capture the spirit of 'Swinging Sixties' London anticipates Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) and gives the film a stylish modernity that was mostly missing from Hammer's films of the 1960s.  In a desperate attempt to breathe life into a flagging genre, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster over-complicates the plot with the help of an extended flashback sequence that does more to confuse than clarify the muddled narrative.  For all the wilful obfuscation, the ending is almost entirely predictable, with the result that, despite some creditable acting and direction, Hysteria is the least satisfying of Hammer's thrillers.  The first run of psycho-thrillers ended where it began, with a woman, a shower, a knife and a maniac.

Film Synopsis

A man wakes up in a London hospital suffering from complete mental blackout.  He has no idea who he is or how he came to end up in this condition.  Named Chris Smith by Dr Keller, the surgeon who has been treating him for the past few months, he only knows that he was involved in a car accident and that an anonymous benefactor is paying for his medical treatment.  Leaving the hospital, he moves into a luxury apartment provided for him by his benefactor, whose identity he tries to uncover with the help of a private detective.  The only clue to his past is the photograph of an unidentified woman found in his possession at the time of the car crash.  When he catches a glimpse of the woman around London his attempts to catch up with her prove futile.  When he shows the photograph to the man who took it he is told that the woman, a model, has recently been murdered.  Chris then begins hearing strange noises from the partially renovated apartment next-door to his.  On entering the apartment he finds a bloody knife beside a running shower.  He is half-convinced he is going out of his mind when the woman in the photograph suddenly presents herself to him and reveals that she is his mysterious benefactor...