FRIGHT

(A.k.a. I'M ALONE AND I'M SCARED; NIGHT LEGS)

A long overdue UK DVD release for this classic British horror thriller from 1971 ...

Pretty young Amanda (Susan George) gets off the bus and wanders through the creepy woods alone one evening. She makes her way to a remote house where the cautious Helen (Honor Blackman) answers the door furtively, peering through heavy locks, before letting Amanda in.

Amanda is there to babysit Helen's young son. Helen introduces the pair of them to each other, revealing herself to be fiercely protective of her son in the process by attacking her husband Jim (George Cole) for not adhering to her strict safety rules. Let's be fair, he's happy to let their pet cat sleep in the cot next to her son's head ...

Amanda seems to like the quiet surroundings that the house offers, and enjoys a glass of port with her employers before bidding them farewell as they leave for the night. But why do they seem so tense?

This question soon exits Amanda's head as she settles into the house, making herself supper and letting in her boyfriend Chris (Dennis Waterman - sporting a nice woolly cardigan and some admirable purple jeans) after he initially scares her by peering through the windows.

As Helen and Jim take a seat at their restaurant table and try to settle their nerves for their anniversary meal, the heat begins to get turned up back at their home ...

First, Chris is kicked out of the house by Amanda following a row. Then Chris meets a violent fate while peeping through the window at Amanda admiring her own cleavage.

Sudden loud sounds on the soundtrack and jump-cuts conspire along with crawling tracking-shots and creeps into the dark to make Amanda's night a fraught one. And this is all before Chris returns to the doorstep covered in blood, and she receives another visitor at the front door - Brian (Ian Bannen), a recently escape mental patient who purports to be the son's biological father ...

Cited in these times as a prototype for the slasher genre, FRIGHT is certainly a taut and effective exercise in simple terror mechanics. The story employs an agreeable "no frills" dynamic, and the babysitter-in-peril scenario has of course been done to death in many a subsequent horror flick.

But to dismiss this as an early example of slasher fare would do a huge injustice to FRIGHT. It's not a slasher film (of course) and the fact that it's threadbare premise has been used as a basis for many a slasher movie doesn't necessarily mean the likes of Bob Clark or John Carpenter owe their careers to this film either. There is, perchance, a possibility of coincidence.

Either way, FRIGHT has so much more to offer than mere slasher conventions. From Blackman's paranoid mother, to George's vibrant, vivacious teenager, to Bannen's oddly justified psycho: these characters are believable, and well fleshed out without coming across as too overt.

The film is directed by old hand Peter Collinson, who's arguably most well-known for helming the original version of THE ITALIAN JOB. He does a great job of crafting FRIGHT into a taut, simple and very effective nightmare. One that feels plausible at all times, and plays more like a TV drama than a film you'd expect to see playing in cinemas.

I suppose the clutch of familiar TV faces make this feel even more like a TV film. Waterman, Cole, Blackman are all prominent. Also, we get a young Roger Lloyd-Pack (Trigger from "Only Fools And Horses") and perennial-in-his-lifetime Michael Brennan thrown in for good measure. Even George has made a name for herself in recent years as a character in "East Enders".

But Collinson is clever enough to stop this from feeling like some staid teleplay. He plays with horror clichés to his advantage, giving us the false shocks and red herrings earlier in the plot before delivering the thrills in spades during the final third. He also keeps things nice and tight, while utilising every twisted camera angle and discomforting handheld shot imaginable in an attempt to keep the viewer uneasy from the start. To a large extent, it works.

The crowning glories here are: Tudor Gates' believable and unfussy script (he previously adapted DANGER: DIABOLIK for Bava's screen version, and went on to pen TWINS OF EVIL); the superb performances of Blackman and Brennan; and George's brilliantly charismatic turn as the female in distress. Achingly sexy, she really should have been a far bigger star than she was (although, let's face it, she hasn't had a bad career ...).

Well-written, well-acted and refusing to fall into cliché - even today - FRIGHT is a superior, if reserved, terror fest that comes highly recommended.

Presented in anamorphic 1.66:1, the film looks very good indeed on this DVD. A little fading here, some grain there. But nothing too imposing in either instance: this is a solid, clean and warm transfer that also offers more depth than you'd expect from a film approaching 40 years of age.

The English mono audio runs smoothly throughout, never distracting from the enjoyable tension.

As with the rest of the clutch of latest genre releases from the Optimum/Studio Canal canon, FRIGHT comes on a basic disc that offers no extras whatsoever.

As with the other titles that have been released alongside FRIGHT - NIGHT OF THE COMET, THE HOWLING 2, MAD MONSTER PARTY - the disc opens with a static main menu page and leads into a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 8 chapters.

If it's any consolation, the out-of-print Anchor Bay DVD that was released in America in 2002 only offered the theatrical trailer, a Collinson bio and an inlay card featuring a reproduction of the original poster for the film. If you really need these 'extras', you can pay handsomely for them by shopping for this disc online ...

For everyone else, surely it's the film that matters and it looks marvellous here.

FRIGHT is a magnificent example of economic storytelling, getting mileage out of a simple set-up through the art of setting a scene and running with it. No frills, no deviations, no unnecessary fannying about. Just Susan George looking gorgeous and getting terrorised.

Well worth picking up.

Review by Stuart Willis