Diagonaldi Very well executed

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

FlashCallahan Brenda leaves Liverpool, telling her mum she's pregnant, and gets a job in a boutique in London. She moves in with Caroline, but her set shuns her, because of her plain looks. She kidnaps a young man's dog, so as to get to know him while returning it. The young man turns out to be a psychopath with a penchant for killing beautiful things. He renames Brenda, and they start a strange relationship.....On first viewing its so reminiscent of Collinsons' Up The Junction, the way it's filmed, and the attitude of supporting characters, and Brenda's personality, so its familiar ground, quite strangely comforting, when you watch the opening act.But then during the second act, its changes rapidly, with some wonderful editing and camera-work, it's as if someone has given the camera to Ken Russell and said, 'off you go Ken, give us Blow Up mixed with Vertigo'.For a Hammer movie, its miles away from anything you'd expect them to do. Its as if your watching Henry: Portrait Of A Kitchen Sink Killer, and just added the working class element into a thriller.The main character of Peter is interesting, but its so reminiscent of David Hemmings you cannot but help to compare it to Blow Up.Its a curioso piece, very psychedelic in nature, but just loses its way toward the end.

shtove First 45 minutes are pretty flat, despite lots of jumpy editing.The female character shows a strange contrast between her winsome imaginary world and the calculated deception she uses to get out of her mother's house and off to London. She uses submissiveness to get her way, but it's not all that interesting and I didn't sympathize with her.Early '70s London is good to see - grotty and groovy at the same time.The male character is well acted. But a lot of the dialog between the leads is Q&A, which I thought was unnecessary. Less is more, and I bet the actors thought a few more silences or unspoken thoughts would have conveyed the meaning better. The seduction is patchy - "give me your hands" is a perfect line, but what is she wearing when she knocks on his door at night? Didn't even make an effort.The two-hander psychological drama picked up when he confronted her over stealing the dog, and the possibilities multiply, but the story didn't exploit them. Both these characters are shallow and manipulative, but in the end we get a bleak good v bad showdown where he's evil and she's innocent.I was hoping they'd make the perfect couple - psychotic and psychopath settle down and live happily ever after. Toward the end there's a police hunt that could have ended in black humor if they'd turned up on the doorstep only to be told by the woman they're looking for to get lost.Couple of absurdities: the carpet knife is not much good for stabbing and that awful wig she wears to "look pretty" - it was the fashion back then, but I cheered when he removed it from her head.At the beginning I was expecting a cross between Looking For Mr Goodbar and Performance, but this falls in between and way short because of a weak script.

musicbymartin Many people cite "To The Devil, A Daughter" as being Hammer's attempt at modernising, but this title does a pretty good job of it, too. While watching it I was struck by the similarities with other kitchen sink dramas (most of which would have been made 5 years before this). Star Rita Tushingham was in a couple of those earlier films herself. Aspects of "Billy Liar", "Peeping Tom" and "Poor Cow" meld into this bleak, nihilistic morality tale for the early 70s.Tushinghams character (she uses three different names throughout the movie) leaves humdrum Liverpool to find a father for her baby. Falling in with a trendy boutique crowd in London, she ends up moving in (very quickly) with a shady stranger. It turns out he hates beautiful things, and this is why he likes Rita (and he kills his own dog when Rita adds a pretty bow).The movie is fast paced and low on gore (but has a lots of disturbing scenes of psychological intensity). It is very unlike the other, more famous Hammer films - it's set in modern times and plays on modern sensibilities; it does away with mythos and superstition and has a very real and very human "bad guy"; the villain in question will get away with it because of his looks and charm and - oh, yeah, this is definitely not a film with a happy ending . . .

Taffy Turner I hadn't seen this movie for decades because it hasn't been shown on terrestrial TV for years, but I decided to buy the Region 1 DVD release (there's no official Region 2 UK release as yet) and I thoroughly enjoyed it.Well it's difficult to dislike Rita Tushingham in any film, but it's directed in such a great style by the late/great Peter Collinson (director of The Italian Job (1969)fame), with a bleak beginning that could only be Britian of the 1960's/1970's and with a real snap shot of how things were in London back then.This is a very different type of film from Hammer, when compared to their usual offerings and must have been truly shocking back then with it's level of cruelty, but it's a classic movie you simply have to own and the fact it's unavailable in the UK (the very place it was made & with an all British cast) is scandalous.