Fear No More

A terse little thriller which both recalls 'North by Northwest' and 'Psycho' and anticipates 'Marnie' and 'Torn Curtain' shot by the Academy Award-winning cameraman Ernest Haller beginning at Union Station at night and ending in the Hollywood Hills the following morning.

The plot gets so convoluted you half expect it all to turn out to be a dream (or rather a nightmare) but when it finally does reach it's conclusion it does so satisfactorily.

Fear No More is a Hitchcock lite low budget noirish conspiracy thriller. It was the only film made by director Bernard Wiesen. The rest of his output was television shows.

Sharon (Mala Powers) is a secretary taken to the train for a business trip to San Francisco by her employer's chauffeur. He puts her on the train and gives her an envelope for an errand.

In the compartment she finds a stranger and a dead woman. She is knocked out and when she regains consciousness. A cop accuses her of murder. Sharon manages to escape from the cop.

She is almost run down by Paul (Jacques Bergerac) a Frenchman taking his son back to his ex wife Denise. Paul gives Sharon a lift to her Los Angeles apartment where she lives with Keith.

Only when she returns to the apartment after going out for a drink with Paul. Keith is dead and the same killer from the train pursues her.

It transpires that Sharon had a mental breakdown. Maybe she is mad or paranoid. Her employer Milo Seymour tells a different story. Sharon was not sent on a business trip and stole $3000 from his safe which is in her envelope.

Not only that, the dead woman from her train compartment walks in. She is alive and well and claims to be Milo's wife.

Despite the low budget, there are a lot of twists as it seems Milo has elaborate plans of his own. The ending does get very hysterical and melodramatic which is a bit of a let down.

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!

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.

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...