The Strange Awakening

With films like this to his credit, it's surprising the name Montgomery Tully isn't better known. On the evidence of this and several others of his movies (Master Spy and Out of the Fog), Tully deserves to be ranked just marginally higher than the notorious Edward D. Wood. There's one important difference, though. Wood's films were so bad they're hilarious. Tully's are just bad.

Tully specialised in the cheap 'quota quickies' that did so much to damage the reputation of the British film industry, and Strange Awakening serves to illustrate exactly how that damage was done. It's dull, predictable, stagy, wordy, badly scripted and poorly realised in just about every department.

The film begins in France (oops, there goes the budget) where a man (Lex Barker) is saying his farewells to a woman in a preposterous hat (Monica Grey). Driving back from the airfield, Barker gives a lift to a hitchhiker (Richard Molinas) who subsequently attempts to steal his car. A struggle ensues and Barker rolls downhill, bumping his head on a tree and knocking himself out (this needs to be seen to be believed).

When he comes to, Barker's character is suffering from amnesia. He is in a luxurious house, where several women and a doctor (Peter Dyneley) are on hand to fill in the gaps in his missing memory. Barker is, it would appear, missing heir Gordy Friend, a well-known lush whose poet father is a leading figure in a temperance-styled society. Friend senior having recently died, 'Gordy' is required to sign a document and recite a piece of his father's intolerant verse in order to complete the transfer of the Friend estate. Ah, if only it were that simple...

To add further plot detail would be at the risk of 'spoiling' the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it (though it could be argued that Tully did a good enough job of spoiling the film himself, which consists mostly of protracted exposition and tortured plot contrivances). Whatever the merits of Hugh Wheeler's original novel (and I suspect they are few), Strange Awakening does not impress as a movie and would probably have been better left in out-of-print obscurity. Still, it's not likely to be bothering the TV schedules or DVD labels anytime soon, so you're unlikely to find your sleep disturbed by this turkey.

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...

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.

This film stars Lex Barker, who in 1949 became Tarzan in succession to Johnny Weissmuller and made a succession of Tarzan films. He was very tall, handsome, and impressive, and was in constant demand as a leading man in B films (he appeared in 81 films). He died at the age of only 54 of a heart attack in the street in Manhattan. He does very well in the lead role in this film, though the acting laurels go to Lisa Gastoni as 'Marny'. I have recently praised her as an underrated actress in my review of WRONG NUMBER (1959, see my review). Carole Mathews and Nora Swinburne do very well in their creepy roles also. As someone who likes amnesia films and tries to see all of them, I was disappointed that this one was so corny. Lex Barker lives between Nice and Cannes. He is attacked and knocked unconscious by a thief whom he picked up as a hitchhiker, and he suffers total amnesia. This is made worse by the fact that he has no identification on him as a result of the robbery. A doctor at the hospital says he knows who he is, and he takes him to a huge villa for private nursing. But this is all a scam, for Barker's amnesia is convenient in enabling the household of women there, together with the dishonest doctor, to persuade him that he is the head of their family. The motive is to pretend that he is that person in order to complete the process of inheriting a large amount of money and property. Then they would get rid of him. Barker slowly begins to realize that something is wrong, and the plot thickens. It is a pity that the film is not at all convincing, and is just a run of the mill low budget 'product' directed without a trace of inspiration by Montgomery Tully, who did a much better job the year before in directing THE HYPNOTIST (1957, see my review). In the 1950s, Tully was directing as many as ten films a year! No wonder they were not all good, as he had become a mere factory hand. He must have sleepwalked through THE STRANGE AWAKENING, without himself waking up. And I bet he had total amnesia for half the films he had made the year before. We can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing much about most of them.

I saw this movie when it first came out and I was still a boy. As the IMDb has no information about the movie's plot or quality, I am appending a few thoughts although I remember very little about this film.

A man (Lex Barker) is driving a glamorous car in the south of France, and gives a lift to a stranger. When the stranger gets out, he does not close the car door and so the driver has to lean over to pull the door shut himself. As he does so, the hitchhiker clubs him with a cosh (or some such implement).

The man wakes up in a luxurious bed within a luxurious bedroom. A very good-looking girl (Lisa Gastoni) walks in and kisses him. He responds as any red-blooded man would but the girl pulls away, saying "That's no way to kiss your sister!" (or words to that effect). The man realises that he has lost his memory. He soon finds that he has an equally good-looking wife (Carole Matthews) and is the son of a rich man.

Although fifty years later I recall these scenes clearly, they are the only scenes I do remember about this movie, so "The Strange Awakening" is both memorable and forgettable!

(I apologise for the inadequacy of this review. If any other IMDb contributor submits a fuller appreciation, I will of course withdraw mine.)