Fright is set in England & starts one dark night as a young babysitter named Amanda (Susan George) arrives at the home of Jim (George Cole) & Helen Lloyd (Honor Blackman) who have hired her to babysit their young son Tara (Tara Collinson) for the evening while they go out to celebrate their anniversary, all seems well although Helen seems a little nervous & Amanda foresees no problems. However Jim & Helen are actually celebrating the fact that Helen's divorce from her insane murderer of a husband has been granted & she is now free to live in peace but is still uneasy with good reason as well since her husband Brian (Ian Bannen) is a real psycho. It just so happens that Brian has escaped from the asylum he has been locked up in & decides to call on his ex-wife & son but finds Amanda there instead & terrorises her as she tries to protect herself & Tara with no way of escaping the house or phoning for help...
This English production was directed by Peter Collinson & is a very impressive early psycho slasher horror thriller that surely must be a contender for the very first teen slasher style horror film ever made, while not typical of what the genre has become all the trademarks are present & the likes of Halloween (1978) probably owe a fair debt of inspiration to Fright. Fright is just a great film on various levels, from a fairly tense & suspenseful horror to the climactic hostage showdown between the deranged Brian & the police, there are many elements in Fright that would now be considered clichéd like the sexually repressed babysitter alone in a big house being terrorised, the annoying sexually frustrated boyfriend playing tricks trying to scare her, ordinary sounds taking on a creepy menace, various false scares, phone lines being cut & a deranged killer escaped from a mental hospital but back when Fright was made these ideas were pretty new & almost certainly had never been used in this way before & to be honest I didn't mind as it's so well handled & genuinely gripping & suspenseful that I just went with it & enjoyed it. At just under an hour & a half Fright lasts long enough without ever becoming boring or dull & I particularly liked the atmospheric set-up before the action kicks in towards the end & this is where I think Fright is most successful. The only slight disappointment is the very low body count & because many of it's core elements are so routine now Fright is maybe a little predictable when seen in 2012 after three decades of faceless teen slashers that tread very familiar ground.
One of the reasons why Fright works so well is the direction as it's superb, from the way he introduces character's to the way shots are framed Fright is great to look & hasn't dated that badly at all. The way Amanda walks up to the house at the start & the camera lingers on large spikes on the metal gates to the very claustrophobic & spooky feel of the house with lots of great angles & use of shadow & foreground objects (Dennis Waterman quips 'you could make a horror film in here' in a nice pre Scream (1996) genre self reference) to the way the character's are dressed with Amanda in particular having the perfect balance of beauty & vulnerability in her purple dress & cute boots. There are one or two jumpy moments & the whole film has a suspenseful feel to it, there's not much gore & only one person is killed which is the only real weak point as far as I can see but sometimes the story & visuals are enough to draw me in & keep me gripped. There's a bit of sex as well as Brian decides to have sex with Amanda thinking it's Helen his ex-wife but I guess rape is rape however you dress it up.
Probably shot on a tiny budget Fright deserves to be better known & more widely seen, the production values are good but the clever photography & direction really shine through here. The acting is great from a top British cast, from the sexy Susan George (how short is that dress again?) to familiar faces like Dennis Waterman, George Cole (later to star together in the comedy drama television series Minder) & Honor Blackman probably best remembered for her role in the Bond film Goldfinger (1964).
Fright deserves to be better known & is something of a forgotten classic, I really liked it & thought it was a tense & suspenseful horror thriller that makes the most of what it has, a solid script & superb direction & photography really help as well. One of the best films I have seen in ages, this one's definitely a keeper.
This English production was directed by Peter Collinson & is a very impressive early psycho slasher horror thriller that surely must be a contender for the very first teen slasher style horror film ever made, while not typical of what the genre has become all the trademarks are present & the likes of Halloween (1978) probably owe a fair debt of inspiration to Fright. Fright is just a great film on various levels, from a fairly tense & suspenseful horror to the climactic hostage showdown between the deranged Brian & the police, there are many elements in Fright that would now be considered clichéd like the sexually repressed babysitter alone in a big house being terrorised, the annoying sexually frustrated boyfriend playing tricks trying to scare her, ordinary sounds taking on a creepy menace, various false scares, phone lines being cut & a deranged killer escaped from a mental hospital but back when Fright was made these ideas were pretty new & almost certainly had never been used in this way before & to be honest I didn't mind as it's so well handled & genuinely gripping & suspenseful that I just went with it & enjoyed it. At just under an hour & a half Fright lasts long enough without ever becoming boring or dull & I particularly liked the atmospheric set-up before the action kicks in towards the end & this is where I think Fright is most successful. The only slight disappointment is the very low body count & because many of it's core elements are so routine now Fright is maybe a little predictable when seen in 2012 after three decades of faceless teen slashers that tread very familiar ground.
One of the reasons why Fright works so well is the direction as it's superb, from the way he introduces character's to the way shots are framed Fright is great to look & hasn't dated that badly at all. The way Amanda walks up to the house at the start & the camera lingers on large spikes on the metal gates to the very claustrophobic & spooky feel of the house with lots of great angles & use of shadow & foreground objects (Dennis Waterman quips 'you could make a horror film in here' in a nice pre Scream (1996) genre self reference) to the way the character's are dressed with Amanda in particular having the perfect balance of beauty & vulnerability in her purple dress & cute boots. There are one or two jumpy moments & the whole film has a suspenseful feel to it, there's not much gore & only one person is killed which is the only real weak point as far as I can see but sometimes the story & visuals are enough to draw me in & keep me gripped. There's a bit of sex as well as Brian decides to have sex with Amanda thinking it's Helen his ex-wife but I guess rape is rape however you dress it up.
Probably shot on a tiny budget Fright deserves to be better known & more widely seen, the production values are good but the clever photography & direction really shine through here. The acting is great from a top British cast, from the sexy Susan George (how short is that dress again?) to familiar faces like Dennis Waterman, George Cole (later to star together in the comedy drama television series Minder) & Honor Blackman probably best remembered for her role in the Bond film Goldfinger (1964).
Fright deserves to be better known & is something of a forgotten classic, I really liked it & thought it was a tense & suspenseful horror thriller that makes the most of what it has, a solid script & superb direction & photography really help as well. One of the best films I have seen in ages, this one's definitely a keeper.