Taste of Fear (1961)

topichtennis on 10/13/2022 Reply  ·  Like  ·  (1 like)

In the 1950s and 1960s there was this common thriller plot that would involve young women who may or may not have seen something nefarious but no one believing her. So as an audience we are questioning is this woman crazy or is there a conspiracy against her. Plots like this go all the way to Gaslight, and it was common in the Italian Giallo genre. The best example of this plot is Diabolique (1955), a French thriller where a wife and mistress murder their lover only for the body to inexplicably vanish.

So in 1961, Britain's largest horror producer, Hammer Films, did its take on this plot with Taste of Fear. The movie starts out with wheelchair bound heiress Penny Appleby visiting her father and her new stepmother for the first time in over a decade. When Penny arrives, she is informed that her father has been called away on a business trip, and also that he maybe sick. The details are very vague, which instantly puts suspicion in Penny's mind. Her stepmother is constantly acting overly nice, which usually sends red flags for these types of movies. Then one night Penny swears that she sees her father in the pool house, dead. Is Penny going crazy? Is her stepmother and Hammer regular Christopher Lee trying to cover a murder, or even worse trying to drive Penny mad? Penny enlists the help of the family chauffeur to help uncover the plot behind these strange events.

The structure of this movie is very odd, as for the first 2/3rds of it, it seems fairly obvious what's going on. It's as if the director was pointing giant neon signs at the stepmother saying "she did it!" And I kept expecting there to be a big twist around the midpoint of the film, but the twist I was expecting never came. And I just assumed that maybe I've seen these types of plots so often that I just can tell what's going to happen... but then... the third act turn comes where Penny and her driver discovers a body, or at least I thought that was the turn, as five minutes later there's a plot twist that made me say "that son of a bitch" out loud(I should mention I was in the gym on the treadmill watching the movie on my phone). This twist made me realize I was watching the movie from the wrong perspective the entire time. A switch had been pulled on me, and I was unaware.

Other than the nifty plot twist, the movie has some really stunning black and white cinematography. The camera is not afraid to move hauntingly through the large empty house, showing Penny's vulnerability. There's a courtyard with a creepy swimming pool that looks gorgeous in black and white, the moonlight almost highlighting the cold water as a point of interest. The only downside to the movie is that there's a couple of leaps of logic that we are asked to make, there are specifically two really large leaps that's tough to buy, and could hamper your enjoyment of the film, especially if you're looking for realism.