IMDb RATING
6.1/10
1.1K
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Reformed drug addict Tim Brett (David Hemmings) is vacationing in Italy with his aunt. When she is murdered, he tries to investigate. Soon his whole life spins out of control.Reformed drug addict Tim Brett (David Hemmings) is vacationing in Italy with his aunt. When she is murdered, he tries to investigate. Soon his whole life spins out of control.Reformed drug addict Tim Brett (David Hemmings) is vacationing in Italy with his aunt. When she is murdered, he tries to investigate. Soon his whole life spins out of control.
- Director
- Writers
- Stars
Wilfrid Hyde-White
- Mr. Copsey
- (as Wilfrid Hyde White)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
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Ex-junkie author David Hemmings (Tim) is chilling out in Italy and agrees to meet his aunt Flora Robson (Lucy) for lunch in Pompeii. I'm afraid that's not going to happen – Robson doesn't make it. She's been strangled. Hemmings wants to find out more about her aunt's life and pursues his own investigation back in London. However, there is a network called 'The Stepping Stones' that seems hell-bent on preventing him from discovering anything. He's a marked man unless he drops his curiosity.
It's a tense film if a little complicated at times as you're never quite sure who's who. Basically, suspect everyone who Hemmings comes into contact with. The cast are good and the story unravels well but the ending just didn't do it for me. I wanted something better as things don't get resolved in the manner I had wanted. And the music by Johnny Harris is laughably inappropriate. I see that some nutter has previously referred to it as a superb music score. He clearly has no knowledge of how to score a film. The film leaves unanswered questions and that was a let-down for me.
It's a tense film if a little complicated at times as you're never quite sure who's who. Basically, suspect everyone who Hemmings comes into contact with. The cast are good and the story unravels well but the ending just didn't do it for me. I wanted something better as things don't get resolved in the manner I had wanted. And the music by Johnny Harris is laughably inappropriate. I see that some nutter has previously referred to it as a superb music score. He clearly has no knowledge of how to score a film. The film leaves unanswered questions and that was a let-down for me.
I felt this could have been so much better and began to temporarily tire of it somewhere around the halfway mark and then it lifted and ran pretty well to the end. David Hemmings seemed a bit limp and Gayle Hunnicutt almost asleep but then maybe it was the erratic script. I guess there is also the problem where a film is going to have different levels of reality that not all can be made too transparently clear. There is a wonderful cameo from Wilfred Hyde-White and things certainly pick up with the appearance of Daniel Massey and Arthur Lowe. Apart from the dialogue being rather lacklustre at times and some scenes going on a tad too long, the music is completely wrong. I have seen the score by Johnny Harris highly praised and possibly outside of the film the jazzy music is fine but here it is too loud, too obvious and basically, bloody annoying. Despite all this, the film remains likable enough and certainly worth a look.
This British - very British - thriller trades on the good name of David Hemmings, who at this time still had substantial "Blow Up" cachet left to p*ss away. His jaded ex-junkie finds his aunt murdered one sunny vacation, and sets out to find out whodunit amid many threatening overtures from big nasties. The main selling point here is a wild and wholly inappropriate soundtrack from one Johnny Harris - Hemmings is just shlepping around the funeral doing nothing in particular, and in comes that damned 'screaming flute' with attendant bongos. It's not embarrassingly bad, but it is dull for long stretches of dialogue in between its set pieces, and for all its attempts to be tense and/or creepy the plot's passing resemblance to Argento's "Deep Red" (also with Hemmings) does this no favours at all.
I speak not of the story itself but the overall atmosphere, and the presence of David Hemmings is of course not totally a coincidence. Remember that the Antonioni's film, his best known, was also starring David Hemmings. Richard Sarafian gives here one of his less known films, and it doesn't deserve such a treatment. In this movie, many details, things may be illusion, they are not necessarily what they seem to be, as in BLOW UP, that's my analysis. It is an intriguing, a bit disturbing mystery tale that grabs you more and more to the extent the movie proceeds. The ending is of course really weird, but I guess that belongs to the overall spirit, mind of this interesting thriller which may let you think of a British giallo. The early seventies was the perfect period for giallos.
I thought that this was a brilliant thriller. Hemmings's character is the perfect foil, an admitted addict. He is like a mute who cannot scream at the horror enveloping him. Paranoia and fecklessness bounce off a genuine conspiracy. The tension is almost unbearable.
Did you know
- TriviaMany critics complained that the film's ending - which appears to show Tim to be insane, and therefore (perhaps) the whole story thus far to be a fantasy (possibly drug-induced) - was suddenly imposed and unsatisfactory, and some sources suggested that it might have been the result of last-minute re-editing. However, there are hints quite early on that the narrative is not as straightforward as it seems to be - the dead body of Tim's aunt is discovered by Juliet, who appears to be a complete stranger to Tim, and yet, when he gets back to England, she has suddenly become his fiancee, although there have been no scenes between them of a romantic nature at all, and his time does seem to have been fully occupied with his investigations. This mysterious plot-lacuna is never even referred to, much less explained.
- GoofsDuring the wedding scene, Hemmings' character calls out for Major Ricketts and then switches to Colonel Ricketts by mistake.
- Quotes
Maj. Ricketts: [discussing Aunt Lucy's death] She said no - "over my dead body". Hence, her dead body.
- Crazy creditsThe role of Columbus (the pigeon whom Tim feeds outside his window) is credited as being played by "A London Pigeon"
- ConnectionsFeatured in Paul Dehn: The Writer as Auteur (2017)
- How long is Fragment of Fear?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime
- 1h 34m(94 min)
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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