Fear No More

Mala Powers mistakenly thinks she can FEAR NO MORE when Good Samaritan Jacques Bergerac finds her lying in the middle of the road after she escapes the policeman who arrested her for the murder of a woman on a train. He takes her to her place where there's another dead body and the couple get an even bigger surprise when they go to her employer's house and find the cop and the "murdered" woman there, insisting she's insane. Jacques doesn't know what to think when he's told Mala is also an escapee from a mental institution after having killed her previous employer. WTF?

Jacques Bergerac, handsome star of stage, screen, and tabloid scandal, was like a suave, Gallic version of Mike Henry whose thick French accent made him hard to understand half the time but it never mattered much since he was usually just eye candy anyway. As luck would have it, Jacques is called upon to react instead of act in this "twisty mystery" that's not half bad if you don't examine it too closely and, in its defense, you don't get the chance. Bottom line: it's a fast-moving B- movie held together by Mala Powers, a pretty good little actress, something I never noticed before.

Although French ,Jacques Bergerac made only two movies in his native land :"un homme se penche sur son passé" and a small part in "Marie-Antoinette Reine De France "where he is virtually unknown ; is it because of that that his name in the movie is Colbert (like Claudette ,who is famous both in the US and in her native land)?

"Fear no more " is an excellent Hitchcokian thriller , with a solid screenplay,and good acting ,particularly by Mala Powers ,lost in a nightmarish set -up : as soon as they arrive in her boss's house, there's no more letup as the story continues to build in suspense and intensity as the interventions become more and more overwhelming for the heroine -who spent some time in a mental hospital- who thinks she's losing her mind -and her only ally does too;Helena Nash's face recalls several hitchcock's villainesses (" the man who knew too much" 2nd version ,"notorious" )

And the screenwriters had not forgotten Hitchcock's lesson:expect the unexpected ; the sudden new developments are numerous all along the movie ,and the supporting characters are not cardboard ( the child's mother is not so petulant, Seymour is not so strong);but the movie belongs to Mala Powers ,whose facial expressions ran the gamut from pain to terror to rebellion.

Secretary Sharon Carlin (Mala Powers) heads from Los Angeles to San Francisco via train on a business trip. Things go bad the moment the train leaves the station as she is met in her cabin by a dead woman and a man with a gun, who knocks her unconscious. She is woken up by a cop who tells her the body has been moved and she is being charged with murder. She jumps off the train and soon runs into good Samaritan Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac). He initially believes her story, but then begins to have doubts when she reveals she spent time in a mental institution for murder. This 77-minute picture moves at a fast pace and has some nice twists in it. Viewers will actually start to doubt Sharon's story and her paranoia is well established. Not a classic, but worth watching once if just for the scene where Colbert's son cracks his forehead on the dashboard in a near crash.

FEAR NO MORE stars Mala Powers as Sharon Carlin, who finds herself caught up in a terrifying mystery full of murder and possible conspiracy. All this, arising from a simple, relaxing train ride to San Francisco.

When Sharon is joined by a seemingly helpful man named Paul (Jacques Bergerac), her life truly begins to spin out of control!

This is a wonderfully dark suspense thriller! The best of such films reveal the depraved / perverse side of human nature, usually resulting in its undoing. This movie is nearly perfect on that score...

When you watch "Fear No More", I strongly advise you to resist the urge to turn off the movie prematurely. You are bound to think that the movie has a million different plot holes and problems but it is important to realize that eventually they do all fit together and make sense.

When the story begins, a woman is riding on a train and she is attacked by a man with a gun. Before she is knocked unconscious, she notices a dead man in the compartment with her. When she awakens, a man identifying himself as a policeman is interviewing her and acting as if she murdered the woman in the train car. However, soon she manages to escape from him and is soon picked up by a nice man who offers to help.

You need to understand that there is a reason the policeman doesn't seem very competent and the story so hard to believe and if you keep watching there is an excellent payoff. Plus many of the typical cliches you'd expect to see in such a film are often subverted in the name of the plot and characters making sense. For example, in too many movies, a person in trouble meets up with someone while they're on the run and almost instantly the stranger believes them and risks their life to help....but this isn't exactly what happens in "Fear No More"...just watch and you'll see the plot problems and cliches melt away and the story turns out to be a dandy. Well worth your time...just be patient with it!