The Strange Awakening

Strange Awakening (1958)

First off: this is a bad B-movie with some fun quirks. That will thrill a few of you and chase the rest away. Good!

The plot, as improbable as it is, has some curious elements, the main one being, what would you do if you woke up and remembered nothing? And started to suspect that the people around you were creating a false history for you? And a few cracks in their story started to show? And you had two or even three attractive women loitering about? And there was a lot of money attached to it all? And your life was in danger?

Well, this movie comes at the nadir of Hollywood and British movie-making, and it's a horribly contrived formula movie that pales next to Twilight Zone and other B-movie dramas with psychological twists. Even the main character's last names are pushy: Friend and Chance, not to mention the burly Swede name Sven. The opening sequence where our hero picks up a hitchhiker and then gets whacked in the head by him is irrelevant, except for the whack. And the amnesia. Then the hospital scene, the mother (so-called) at bedside, and the realization that all is not right. But hey, there are those pretty girls, and one of them is bound to sympathize with you and fall into your arms, right?

And it's only an hour long. You might think of it as just an old t.v. episode where your expectations are different. It bustles along with mediocre acting, reasonable filming, crack editing, and some cool and brief montage effects (including an airplane propellor merging into a tabletop fan). And the original title, Female Fiends, is pretty good, though there are Male Fiends on hand, too (remember Sven).

Director Monty Tully isn't about to have a boxed set of his work, but it's great fun just to read the titles of all the movies he made this same singular year, 1958: The Diplomatic Corpse, The Electronic Monster, Female Fiends, Print of Death, Crime of Honour, The Crossroad Gallows, The Long Knife, Man with a Gun, and I Only Arsked! What a year.

Strange Awakening, here before you, isn't all bad!

But mostly. Enjoy it in proportion.

If you watch the trailer on the Network disc you will save yourselves about 77 minutes of boredom.There is so little action.When it does come it is filmed at night.Now that was fine if you were watching it in a cinema,but watching it on tv means you are peering at the screen.In any event the plot is a variation on a very old chestnut.

Peter Chance (Lex Barker) picks up the wrong hitchhiker, winding up in an accident. Upon awakening, he suffers from amnesia.

Somehow, he's now a zillionaire named Peter Friend. He's "married" to Selena (Carole Matthews) and lives in a huge mansion with his other "family" members. Peter thinks the whole setup is fishy, but everyone else keeps trying to convince him otherwise.

THE STRANGE AWAKENING is a conspiratorial suspense thriller. Barker is good in his confused role, and the twisty finale is satisfying. Is it the best movie of its type ever made? Well, no. It is enjoyable enough though...

Recently read the book Puzzle For Fiends and was interested to see how this adaptation compared. The scene has been switched from southern California to the south of France, but the rich suffocating decor of the Friend's mansion is accurately conveyed and for a low-budget movie, veteran Wilfred Arnold's sets are notable. One of the characters describes the rest of the Friend family as fiends at one point, a play on words which accounts somewhat for the alternative title. Casting is excellent, but the script ignores the rivalry between the glamorous duo of Selena and Marnie and the question of who is the most devious, accounting for a considerable amount of tension in the book. And for such a wordy film the full significance of the importance of the poem reading before the hellfire cult leader for example, is not adequately put over. It's watchable, but the audience, the cast, and the art director deserved something amounting to more.

A British B or quota movie. Some of these are not too bad but this one rates a Z rather than a B.

The acting was atrocious it was wordy there were holes every where in the plot. Production values couldn't have been cheaper except for the burning house at the end which was kind of neat.

A man with amnesia is spirited out of hospital with fake casts to take the place of an alcoholic playboy so 3 women can inherit a share of their teetotaler father's 2 million dollars.

I can't think of any thing good about this thing... but as another reviewer stated it wasn't bad enough to be funny it was just boring dull and irritating. Combine bad acting and talkiness and you've got a real lemon.

DO NOT RECOMMEND