Traitement de choc

'Stop Me Before I Kill' is AKA 'The Full Treatment'. Both titles seem to fit this film quite well.

A race car driver is in an accident and spends time in a coma, once he is awake he has the strange urge to kill his wife. His wife seeks help from a psychiatrist to help her husband overcome his urge and to find out why this is suddenly happening.

The ending of this film seem appropriate - very befitting. I will not give it away for those who have not seen the film and would like to.

This is not a bad mystery-drama - it's pretty good. No movie is "perfect" - they all have a few flaws and this one is no exception. The flaws in this film are minor.

All movies are hard to fathom - you have to suspend your beliefs to watch any movie. With this film you will have to do the same thing as with any film.

All in all a pretty good film. I enjoyed watching it.

7/10

Still recovering from serious head injuries sustained in a car crash, motor racing driver Alan Colby and his wife Denise go on holiday to the South of France. There, Alan is suddenly and unexpectedly struck with a compulsion to strangle his wife. Hearing about this, Dr. David Prade, a local psychiatrist, offers to help, but his offer is rejected by Alan and he and Denise return to London. The psychiatrist follows them there, convinced that sooner or later his services will be needed and that he should be close at hand. At first, all seems well with Alan, but then one morning he wakes from a long sleep to find that Denise has disappeared. Worse, all the evidence points to his having murdered her.

Beautifully filmed in black-and-white MegaScope by the great Gil Taylor and masterfully directed by Guest, who was always at his best working on suspense films, "The Full Treatment" is a minor classic.

Val Guest directed this psychological suspense yarn about a race car driver(played by Ronald Lewis) who is having huge stress issues after nearly cracking up in a car race. He takes his wife(played by Diane Cilento) on a trip to the South of France for a vacation, but is still plagued by stress and other psychological issues, so agrees to see a psychiatrist(played by Claude Dauphin) but complications ensue, as things(of course) are not all that they seem. Misfired attempt at suspense has a good cast but is fatally overlong and far too talky, with nothing in the story justifying this over-length, as film becomes quite tedious.

Psychological thriller from producer-director Val Guest could perhaps use more thrills and less psychology. Racecar driver fights against getting psychiatric help after a road accident--which killed the other driver--has left him badly shaken; his spouse begs him to reconsider, particularly after she becomes the target of her husband's subconscious rage. Adaptation of Ronald Scott Thorn's novel "The Full Treatment" (the movie's alternate title), by Thorn and Guest, has some tart dialogue and solid performances, and looks great as photographed by Gilbert Taylor, but the midsection of the film is redundant. Guest turns the plot-screws with careful deliberation, but is too slow in getting this web untangled. **1/2 from ****

At 108 minutes, the Hammer production "Stop Me Before I Kill!" is one of the longest movies that they made. It's a rather meaty story, and serves as a major showcase for three of its main actors, but isn't that satisfying overall. Written by producer & director Val Guest and author Ronald Scott Thorn, based on the latters' novel "The Full Treatment", it tells of a British race car driver, Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis), and his lovely Italian wife Denise (Diane Cilento), vacationing in France some time after a bad traffic accident in which the other driver had died. Alan fears for his sanity, and is now worried that he may have developed homicidal intentions towards his wife. They make the acquaintance of an eminent French psychiatrist, David Prade (Claude Dauphin), who attempts to help Alan deal with his issues.

This could and should have been a little more involving, as the premise is not bad and it's entertaining enough in watching psychiatric methods being employed. But the script by Guest and Thorn is so heavily laden with dialogue that it barely gives the story (not to mention the actors) a chance to breathe. It does have some good dialogue, and starts to go for more interesting visuals in its final third. The on location shooting, of course, is impeccable, which, along with the Megascope photography, helps to make the picture pleasant enough to look at. (To say nothing of sexy blonde Cilento). Dauphin, Cilento, and Lewis are all fine, and they're ably supported by Francoise Rosay as Prades' mother, and Bernard Braden as Colby's friend Harry. The filmmaking is pretty slick; it's just too bad that the scenario can't generate more suspense.

Certainly worth a look for devoted Hammer followers, but not one of their best.

Six out of 10.