It’s been noted on more than one occasion that Peter Collinson‘s Fright, produced by Harry Fine and Michael Style of Fantale Films, the people behind Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy (The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971)), bears more than a few similarities with John Carpenter’s Halloween that would come out seven years later. It’s the lesser film but it’s now a notable footnote in the development of the slasher film – not a very big footnote but it’s certainly been pressed int service in many a survey of the early, pre-Carpenter years of the slasher film. In one of the many entirely coincidental connections between the two films, Halloween was developed under the title The Babysitter and Collinson‘s film was shot as the not dissimilar The Baby Minder.

Student Amanda (Susan George) arrives at the woodland home of Helen (Honor Blackman) and Jim (George Cole) to look after their young son Tara (Tara Collinson, the director’s son) while they go out for the evening with their friend Dr Cordell (John Gregson). Once the couple leave, Amanda is watching Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) on television when she’s disturbed by strange sounds that turn out to be her boyfriend Chris (Dennis Waterman, sharing a pre-Minder (1979-1994) opening credits card with Cole though they have no actual scenes together). She makes him leave and he’s attacked and left for dead by a man lurking outside the house. She’s soon being menaced by Helen’s former husband Brian (Ian Bannen) who has escaped from the psychiatric hospital where he’s been held since trying to murder his wife.

There’s not much to it really. The script by Tudor Gates (who also wrote the Karnstein trilogy) is full of clunky dialogue, not always convincingly delivered by an interesting cast who remain the best reason to watch the film. It is, at best, an OK chiller that takes far too long to get going and then ramps up the melodrama to the point of hysteria. It feels like it might have been a better fit for a television anthology series or in an Amicus anthology film, often feeling a bit overstuffed with too much trivial business needed to keep the running time up.

Collinson works overtime to compensate for the lousy script and the film is often a visual treat, full of atmospheric shots, unexpected camera flourishes and surprising camera angles, and makes impressive use of sound and silence. It’s a frequently good-looking film, but no matter how much grandstanding Collinson attempts he never quite gets past the fact that the plot is very slim indeed and beneath all the histrionics there’s really not that much going on here at all. With everything dialled up to ten by the end of the first reel, there’s nowhere left for the film to go so it resorts to a clumsy bit of back story delivered in a wodge of exposition that ends in an entirely unnecessary and unbelievable car crash.

In the latter half, George is reduced to a simpering wreck who doesn’t even think to question who this stranger is that comes barging into the house after the badly injured Chris falls through the front door, screaming hysterically as Bannen tears into his performance with far too much gusto, twitching, ranting and gibbering like his life depended on it. Warming up for the same year’s Straw Dogs, George is subjected to a rape scene, shot in silence except for her terrified breathing (a tip of the hat, perhaps, to Repulsion (1965)). Elsewhere George Cole proves that among his many talents, dancing wasn’t one of them and there’s an appearance from the most useless, deskbound, jobsworth police officers in British cinema history. Though in fairness, if they’d been just a tad brighter and bit less paperwork obsessed, they’d have been on the case a lot quicker, and the film would indeed have been the better short film alluded to earlier.

Though there’s some little tension in the final moments, it’s not really enough to elevate the film above the ordinary and is anyway dissipated by the terrible closing title song, a dreadful little ditty titled Ladybird and penned by an uncredited Harry Robinson (yet another Karnstein trilogy alumnus) with words by Bob Barratt and vocals from Nanette. Fright is one of those films that has more potential than it actually realises and is rather better to read about than it is to sit through, a very slight, overly sensational film that you were likely to have forgotten on the way home from the cinema. It’s far from the worst film that British horror would offer up in the 1970s, but in the final analysis it’s all just a bit ho-hum – nicely directed and boasting a very watchable cast, but not really amounting to very much at all.

All that said, the same story was pressed into service twice more, in Oddvar Bull Tuhus’s obscure Norwegian horror film Angst in 1976 and again in Gary Graver’s Trick or Treats in 1982, neither of which seems to credit either Gates or Collinson.

Crew
Directed by: Peter Collinson; Fantale Films Ltd presents. Made in association with British Lion Films Ltd.; Produced by: Harry Fine & Michael Style; Written by: Tudor Gates; Director of Photography: Ian Wilson; Film Editor: Raymond Poulton; Music Composed and Conducted by: Harry Robinson; Wardrobe: Jean Fairlie; Make-up: George Blackler; Hairdresser: Pearl Tipaldi; Production Designer: Disley Jones

Cast
Susan George (Amanda); Honor Blackman (Helen); Ian Bannen (Brian); John Gregson (Dr Cordell); George Cole (Jim); Dennis Waterman (Chris); Maurice Kaufmann (police inspector); Michael Brennan (police sergeant); Roger Lloyd Pack (constable); Tara Collinson (Tara)

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