Fragment of Fear

Ex-junkie author David Hemmings (Tim) is chilling out in Italy and agrees to meet his aunt Flora Robson (Lucy) for lunch in Pompeii. I'm afraid that's not going to happen – Robson doesn't make it. She's been strangled. Hemmings wants to find out more about her aunt's life and pursues his own investigation back in London. However, there is a network called 'The Stepping Stones' that seems hell-bent on preventing him from discovering anything. He's a marked man unless he drops his curiosity.

It's a tense film if a little complicated at times as you're never quite sure who's who. Basically, suspect everyone who Hemmings comes into contact with. The cast are good and the story unravels well but the ending just didn't do it for me. I wanted something better as things don't get resolved in the manner I had wanted. And the music by Johnny Harris is laughably inappropriate. I see that some nutter has previously referred to it as a superb music score. He clearly has no knowledge of how to score a film. The film leaves unanswered questions and that was a let-down for me.

Fragment of Fear is a film that has somehow slipped under the radar since its release in 1970 and that's a real shame as while the film does have a few narrative problems; this is excellently produced and well worked mystery thriller that really does deserve to be more seen. The film is halfway between a murder mystery and a psychological thriller and director Richard C. Sarafian gives both halves of the film equal credence as the focus is stretched across the central character's questionable mental health and the murder of his aunt that he is investigating. The central character is Tim Brett; he's a reformed drug addict living in Italy. He returns to London when his aunt is found murdered and begins asking people who knew his aunt questions. It's not long before strange things start happening to him; his flat is broken into, he receives a letter that was written on his own typewriter and gets strange phone calls. It soon transpires that someone doesn't want Tim investigating. But naturally, considering he was a drug user, nobody will believe him...

Some have labelled this film as a British Giallo; I don't agree that such a thing exists personally, but Fragment of Fear does feature some staples of Italy's finest type of film. The murder mystery is a given, but we also have an unseen killer and adding to that is the fact that many Giallo's feature a lead character with a fractured state of mind. The film is lead by the great David Hemmings who puts in a good performance. I was unsure of how he would across as a former drug user given his debonair screen presence, but he actually fits into this role really well and is not hard to believe. Director Richard C. Sarafian keeps the film streamlined and the action focused on the mystery which ensures that Fragment of Fear is always interesting and entertaining. The film gets more exciting as it goes along and it all boils down to a good ending that provides a nice twist and also manages a bit of ambiguity. Overall, it's a real shame that this film is so obscure as it deserves a wider audience and hopefully it will soon be picked up for a DVD release. Recommended if you can find it!

An intriguing thriller with a fine, bewildered performance from David Hemmings. Unfortunately, the film overdoses visually in bizarre for bizzare's sake with a very unsatisfactory ending.

Richard Sarafian is a decidedly underrated director. After finally seeing this, it's satisfying to report his VANISHING POINT was not a flash-in-the-pan. FRAGMENT...does not move at the same pace, nor does it get the viewer involved quite as quickly, but once you're about twenty minutes in, you're hooked until the end as Sarafian and screenwriter Dehn continually manipulate reality and our perceptions of it, along with lead character David Hemmings' perceptions of it. Really brilliant in the way it portrays a matter-of-fact unfolding of events that seem like a conventional, yet still insidious conspired-murder-by-blackmail-ring plot. But then we're constantly shown by the dialogue and actions of other characters that these events we've just witnessed may never have occurred. As an audience, we're constantly being shifted back and forth, momentarily convinced that recovering-addict-turned-successful-writer Hemmings is undergoing paranoid delusions, then the next moment convinced there really is a vast conspiracy against him and his investigation into his rich aunt's death. Disturbing and constantly involving, sucking the viewer in until the shocking conclusion. Unfortunately, the film's one real liability, which may in fact be the reason for some viewers' antipathy toward this film, is its totally inappropriate music score. Not only is the score mixed too loud on the soundtrack, it repeatedly draws attention to itself, often diffusing the effects Sarafian is trying to achieve. If only they had gotten someone like John Dankworth who could have composed a similar jazzy score but much more subtly and in keeping with the film's rhythms. Of course, even better would have been Ennio Morricone, someone who had already scored many Italian giallo thrillers that had attempted to play with reality in a similar way. Whomever hired Johnny Harris made a big mistake. His score is the one thing that keeps this from being a genuine little masterpiece.

I felt this could have been so much better and began to temporarily tire of it somewhere around the halfway mark and then it lifted and ran pretty well to the end. David Hemmings seemed a bit limp and Gayle Hunnicutt almost asleep but then maybe it was the erratic script. I guess there is also the problem where a film is going to have different levels of reality that not all can be made too transparently clear. There is a wonderful cameo from Wilfred Hyde-White and things certainly pick up with the appearance of Daniel Massey and Arthur Lowe. Apart from the dialogue being rather lacklustre at times and some scenes going on a tad too long, the music is completely wrong. I have seen the score by Johnny Harris highly praised and possibly outside of the film the jazzy music is fine but here it is too loud, too obvious and basically, bloody annoying. Despite all this, the film remains likable enough and certainly worth a look.