Straight On Till Morning
1972, UK, Directed by Peter Collinson
Colour, Running Time: 92 minutes
DVD, Region 2, Optimum, Video: Anamorphic 1.66:1, Audio: Mono
The rather naive Brenda (or Wendy, as she’s later known) leaves home to head for London in search of someone to father a child. There she manages to get a job in a record shop and making one or two friends in the process. Meeting what she believes to be a suitable partner at a party (James Bolam!) she later finds him in bed with her friend and heads off outside, an emotional mess. There she sees another eligible partner in the shape of Peter. Formulating a plan to get to meet him (stealing his dog in order to take it back to Peter’s address after having ‘found’ it) she ends up moving in after revealing to him that she wants a child - he in turn apparently wants someone to do the house chores, cleaning, etc. But the silly girl doesn’t click on to the fact that’s obvious to viewers: he’s a complete psychopath who has a problem with beauty. This is temporarily fortunate for her because she’s actually quite ugly - a trip to the beautician later on doesn’t even do the trick (she comes out looking like a Wizard of Oz reject) - but, nevertheless and as others before her have discovered to their own disadvantage, her life is at risk.
More of a thriller from Hammer and set in the modern day, the first 15 minutes or so setting up Straight On… is unnecessarily chaotic thanks to the erratic editing, but once the film settles down it becomes reasonably enjoyable and quite disturbing in some ways. Rita Tushingham’s performance as the child-like ugly duckling is good and endearing; Shane Briant as Peter comes across as decidedly odd, almost androgynous; the great James Bolam is underused unfortunately. The killer’s motivations seem like something out of an Italian Giallo, though, apart from the brief but admittedly horrible (despite no real gore being shown) ‘murder’ scenes, the film doesn’t stray too much into horror territory. However the final act (the tape playback scene) actually sent a chill through my blood, something that rarely happens with a Hammer film (it’s even got an 18 certificate here in the UK!). In some respects this oddity can be considered a successful venture.
The Optimum DVD picture quality is excellent with lots of detail and nice colours, and presented correctly at 1.66:1. It also features a commentary by Tushingham and is therefore pretty much identical to the US disc put out several years back, i.e. the film is better specified on DVD than you’d expect for such an obscurity. Worth checking out.