Paranoiac ***½ (1963, Janette Scott, Oliver Reed, Sheila Burrell, Maurice Denham, Alexander Davion, Liliane Brousse) – Classic Movie Review 3305

Hammer Films’ 1963 thriller Paranoiac is loosely based on Josephine Tey’s brilliant novel Brat Farrar, in which a charming young man long believed dead returns to his family estate to claim his inheritance.

Director Freddie Francis’s 1963 Hammer Films British murder-mystery horror thriller Paranoiac is entertaining, ambitious and well done. Jimmy Sangster’s screenplay is loosely based without on-screen credit on Josephine Tey’s brilliant classic thriller novel Brat Farrar, in which a charming young man long believed dead returns to his family estate to claim his inheritance.

The back story is that a decade earlier the wealthy Ashby family has been shattered when the parents died in a plane crash and their grieving son Tony committed suicide. Now in the present, top billed Janette Scott stars as the orphaned girl Eleanor Ashby who has grown up into a mentally fragile young woman. Oliver Reed co-stars as her cruel and greedy alcoholic brother Simon, who is just weeks away from being of age to receive his inheritance. Sheila Burrell plays the protective Aunt Harriet.

But then someone in the guise of their brother Tony (Alexander Davion) turns up suddenly one day despite being long believed dead after apparently being deceased by his own hand. [Spoiler alert] The unstable Simon is of course well upset. The man pretending to be Tony seems to be able to prove he is who he says he is and claims his inheritance. Can he survive long enough to rescue Eleanor from the murderous hands of her brother Simon?

Paranoiac also stars Maurice Denham as John Kossett, Liliane Brousse as Françoise and John Bonney as Keith Kossett. Also in the cast are John Stuart, Colin Tapley, Harold Lang, Marianne Stone and Arnold Diamond.

The actors work the Hitchcockian situations up very well in true stalwart British style to keep up with a plot that is overloaded with devices to confuse and mislead the audience. Even if it has a Josephine Tey-derived story, making it seem familiar rather than surprising for thriller buffs, it’s still a fun, fast-moving chiller with a splendidly OTT turn from Reed to help paper over any of the very few cracks.

Francis keeps it tense and compelling, and it easily fills its short 80-minute running time. The cinematography by Hammer regular Arthur Grant is in effective Gothic horror black and white.

It is the first of director Freddie Francis’s enjoyable Psycho-esque Hammer Horror trilogy, preceding and Nightmare and Hysteria.

Josephine Tey’s 1949 crime novel Brat Farrar is partly based in part on the Victorian legal case The Tichborne Claimant. Paranoiac changes many of the details of the novel. The Ashbys are wealthy and have no need to raise horses; the impostor who plays Tony is not a long-lost cousin; and the character of Uncle Charles does not appear.

In 1986, the BBC and A&E Television Networks memorably adapted Brat Farrar for TV in six weekly episodes or as a three-part miniseries with Mark Greenstreet, Angela Browne and Frederick Treves.

The movies in The Hammer Horror Series box set are The Brides of Dracula, The Curse of the Werewolf, The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Kiss of the Vampire, Paranoiac, The Evil of Frankenstein and Nightmare (1964).

Scottish author Elizabeth MacKintosh (25 July 1896 – 13 February 1952) used the pseudonym Josephine Tey. Her novel A Shilling for Candles is the basis of Hitchcock’s 1937 film Young and Innocent and her novel The Franchise Affair was filmed in 1950 starring Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3305

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/