Jeff Farrell, played by Kerwin Mathews, is an American artist who falls out with his rich girlfriend (and wants to shake off her father) near the outset of our story. We're in France and he turns up alone and with no transport (as she's taken it) at a village cafe which is run by Annette (Nadia Gray) and her seductive step-mother Eve (Nadia Gray). He tries his luck with the younger, but is foiled by the older and (very quickly) falls in love!
Annette's dad (and Eve's now husband) is in an asylum for having been declared mentally unstable after killing a man who raped Annette some years previous (which is actually depicted, sympathetically, in the opening scene). Georges the dad is played by Donald Houston. Eve, now apparently madly in love with Jeff hatches a plan to break Georges out so that she and Jeff can be free to start their life together without Georges' presence - and responsibility for her - hanging over them. Eve also wants to get Annette out of the way so as to have Jeff to herself (as she previously caught Jeff kissing Annette). Confused?!
It becomes a bit clearer when you realise that Eve is duty-bound to visit Georges every two weeks and tells Jeff how it is making her life wretched. And Annette, in the mix, wants to be with her dad with the promise of a rendezvous and new life for the two of them far from here. So, he gets out (with the help of someone on the inside) and Jeff and Eve give him a lift to a quayside where he is to hop on a boat, disappear, then send word to Annette to join him later when settled.
Right - that's the background to the yarn! Now the twists and turns start coming, Hitchcock-style, as we start to find out a bit more about all the characters. A body is found in Eve's car and the police start to sniff around - as the person who helped Georges disappear has gone missing. No spoilers, then - though probably many people will see the twists and turns coming.
The film's focus mostly stays with Jeff, who gets increasingly paranoid and drawn into a dark world of deceit, murder, manipulation and betrayal. He (and we) don't know quite who to trust (or not) by the end and as the layers of the story unfold.
There's plenty of noir atmosphere as the unsettling tension builds and as we find out a bit more about Georges, his liking for welding gear, and the line being drawn between sanity and madness! So, not a Hammer monster film, but it's certainly disturbing to watch and at times, keeps one on one's toes. Well I enjoyed it anyway - and you can too at the time of writing, available in full on YouTube.
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