edwagreen Stefanie Powers got more than she was wishing for when she meets and stays in the home of a wealthy widow, whose husband was a great composer. Powers is there to do research on the latter in order to obtain her master's degree; however, she encounters much more as the film descends quickly into the macabre.James Olson is the paralyzed son in this way over-the-top drama. Margaritta Scott does quite an imitation of Joan Fontaine here. She sounds just like her, and she can become quite eerie as well.Powers realizes quickly that it's time to exit as all sorts of strange things seem to happen. There is absolute mayhem, drug addiction, murder, seduction, you name it.Of course, we have the resolution of the twin. Normally, a cop-out, but the film is so dreadful by then that you just don't care.

morrison-dylan-fan Taking a look at a DVD sellers page,I spotted a Hammer Horror that I had never heard about before.With having been very interested in seeing Hammer take on the Psycho Thriller,I got set to see the studio reach their crescendo.The plot:Writing a thesis on deceased classical composer Henry Ryman, Susan Roberts decides to do research on the thesis by visiting Ryman's family,and staying at their villa in France (talk about going the extra mile for a thesis!) Arriving at the villa,Susan is greeted by Henry's wife Danielle,and introduced to their wheelchair-bound son Georges.As she begins researching on an unfinished crescendo that Henry wrote,Susan begins to fall in love for Georges,who suffers from seizures,and uses medicine that causes Georges to have black outs.During the blackouts,Georges experiences horrific nightmares,which involves him having sex with a women,who are both killed by a duplicate of Georges.Feeling unsettled after she catches a glimpse of someone who looks just like Henry playing a composition,Susan begins to fear that the Ryman's are keeping something secret from her,when the family maid suddenly disappears,and Danielle orders for the pool to be emptied.View on the film:Opening with a surreal dream sequence, director Alan Gibson & cinematographer Paul Beeson compose an extraordinary ,operatic Giallo-style Horror Chiller.Despite taking place in one building,Gibson & Beeson gives the title a strikingly tense atmosphere,with elegantly stylised tracking shots locking Susan in the villa,and lavish "corner" shots subtly showing Susan being unable to get a clear view of the Ryman's.Filmed on location in France,Gibson basks the film in vibrant primary colours,which along with giving the dream sequences an off- beat mood,also heats up the movie for the light blues and bright red splashes of blood to shiver across the screen.For the dazzling dream sequences,the screenplay by Jimmy Sangster/ Alfred Shaughnessy & Michael "Witchfinder General" Reeves dips Hammer back into their Film Noir roots,as Georges fragmented memories of the dreams leads him to questioning how "real" Susan is being.Whilst the excuse to get Susan to meet the Ryman's is a bit of a stretch,the writers make up for it by cleverly continuing Hammer Horror's theme of women being the main holders of power. The writers also superbly cross proto-Slasher hack & slash terror with a psychologically bleak Giallo edge,with each murder/disappearance leading to Susan getting closer to uncovering the Ryman's secret,which leads to the writers unleashing a wonderfully wicked twist ending.Looking gorgeous when entering the villa, Stefanie Powers gives an excellent performance as Susan Roberts,with Powers delicately displaying a mix of care and fear towards Georges,whilst also giving Susan a gripping sense of curiosity.Giving the challenge of carrying the twist,James Olson gives a great performance as Georges,as Olson wraps Georges in a warming sense of nervousness which is shattered by the scrambled nature that the dreams are turning Georges brain into,as Susan gets set to hear the Ryman's final crescendo.

Spikeopath Crescendo is directed by Alan Gibson and written by Alfred Shaughnessy and Jimmy Sangster. It stars Stefanie Powers, James Olson, Margaretta Scott, Jane Lapotaire and Joss Ackland. Music is by Malcolm Williamson and cinematography by Paul Beeson.Susan Roberts (Powers) travels to the South of France to stay with the Ryman family as she researches the work of late composer Henry Ryman for her thesis. Once there at the villa, Susan finds that the remaining family members are a little strange…Out of Hammer Films, Crescendo came at the end of the studio's cycle of psycho-thrillers that had begun so magnificently with Taste of Fear in 1961. Filmed in Technicolor, Crescendo has more than a passing resemblance to Taste of Fear. We are in a remote French villa in the company of some shifty characters. A wheelchair features prominently, there's spooky goings on, skeletons in the closet and our lead lady who is the outsider at the villa is in grave danger. So it's Taste of Fear but in colour then!Crescendo is not a great film, it's ponderously paced by Gibson, meandering through the first half set up and it's all a bit too obvious as to what is going to unravel. That said, the finale is a good pay off in its construction, the Ryman villa set is suitably designed for some creepy shenanigans, while the colour photography is deliciously lurid with the zesty oranges and ocean greens particularly striking the requisite campo composition.Then there's the cast! Powers is just dandy, having had her trial run in the disappointing Die! Die! My Darling! in 1965, she hits the required "woman in confused peril" notes even though the script does her absolutely no favours. Olson gets to don the worst hair cut in Hammer history as Georges, but the character is pungent with emotional disturbances. Wheelchair bound and having a penchant for hard drugs administered by the sultry maid…Ah yes! Lapotaire as the housemaid Lillianne, she steams up the screen with her teasing sexuality, positively revelling in her ability to have poor Georges eating out of her hand. Scott handles the batty Ryman matriarch well enough, while Ackland does a damn fine Lurch impression. The film has some qualities that put it above average, but it's a bit too bloodless to be a must see horror film, and much too laborious to be a thriller. It sits in some sort of Hammer Film purgatory, a picture that asks you to take the rough with the smooth. But all things considered, you probably should watch Taste of Fear instead. 6/10

MARIO GAUCI This was the last of Hammer's 10 psycho-thrillers to get watched by me: in the long run, it is a middle-of-the-road effort, not particularly good but neither is it among the worst. Still, the film has palpable deficiencies, first and foremost because it is severely undercast (though lead Stefanie Powers had already co-starred in the above-average FANATIC aka DIE! DIE! MY DARLING {1965} from the same stable: incidentally, I regret not giving that one a spin as part of my recent tribute to its late director Silvio Narizzano!) and over-familiar – to say nothing of being essentially dreary – in plot line. In fact, it borrows the French setting, wheelchair-bound protagonist and the mysterious room from TASTE OF FEAR aka SCREAM OF FEAR {1961}, the hallucinations pertaining to a past crime from NIGHTMARE {1964} – both among the company's top outings and both also scripted by the late Jimmy Sangster, who here reworked Alfred Shaughnessy's original scenario…which had actually been intended for Michael Reeves, the promising but short-lived director of WITCHFINDER GENERAL {1968}! – and the domineering mother from FANATIC itself. By the way, the pool-as-murder-setting owes its origins to Henri-Georges Clouzot's seminal DIABOLIQUE (1955), which – along with Alfred Hitchcock's even more celebrated PSYCHO {1960} – was virtually the template for all of these Hammer shockers to begin with! Another clear link to the latter's cinematic universe is the molding of one character into the personality of another, now deceased, which was at the center of both his REBECCA (1940) and VERTIGO (1958)! One additional motif here is the eerie presence of broken dolls, which may very well have already been employed by some earlier Hammer shocker but was certainly a vital feature of Freddie Francis' THE PSYCHOPATH (1966): while this was made for the company's rival Amicus, its director had contributed a trio of titles to the British House Of Horror's Grand Guignol-infused subgenre.The afore-mentioned dreams that afflict hero James Olson (who had just starred in Hammer's goofy 'Space Western' MOON ZERO TWO {1969}) do rather give away the final twist (much-abused over the years), especially with the repetition but, then, the plot does incorporate a number of red herrings which makes one think the narrative will be going a certain way only for it to change direction before long. These have to do with the sordid goings-on in the central mansion and the sleazy characters that inhabit it, the others being Margaretta Scott – whom I was mainly familiar with from the mammoth Alexander Korda/William Cameron Menzies sci-fi THINGS TO COME (1936) – as Olson's "obsessed" mother (determined to keep the memory of her late and distinguished composer husband alive), Jane Lapotaire as the "sensuous" maid (who procures Olson with his heroin fix for sexual services rendered – the film is reasonably explicit in this regard – though at the same time deluding herself that she can one day become his wife) and "sinister" manservant Joss Ackland (who seems to have something going with the latter as well but nothing is eventually made of it!). I deliberately quoted the adjectives utilized in the accompanying theatrical trailer (for the record, though CRESCENDO was recently issued on DVD-R as part of Warners' "Archive Collection", the copy I watched came via a serviceable VHS source) to describe each of these three characters! To the house arrives young, pretty music teacher Powers who has decided to research the life and work of Scott's husband for her Masters degree; the main piano theme, while quite good in itself, does receive a thorough work-out amid the proceedings. Another quibble I have with the script expressly concerns her presence there (though it is not limited to the film under review), that is to say, if the household obviously concealed some dark secret that would invariably bring the whole crushing down (thankfully, not literally) on its occupants, why tempt Fate by inviting an outsider into their fold? The climax, then, is appropriately intense but also not exactly inspired (with Ackland's demise proving especially unconvincing) and abrupt into the bargain. Indeed, even if the handling here of Hammer newbie Alan Gibson was appreciated by some, I had always been somewhat wary of his involvement since he would subsequently helm the notorious last two entries in the company's "Dracula" franchise, which brought the mythical vampire Count uneasily into contemporary times (though he still could not tarnish the reputation of genre icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee)! Even so, I did enjoy one of his two contributions to the HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (1980) TV series (which had also starred Cushing) and was intrigued enough by the picture that would follow CRESCENDO, namely the obscure but impressively-cast telepathic horror GOODBYE GEMINI (1970), that I acquired it soon after this viewing...