Fanatic *** (1965, Tallulah Bankhead, Stefanie Powers, Peter Vaughan, Donald Sutherland) – Classic Movie Review 3310

Director Silvio Narizzano’s 1964 horror movie stars the one and only Tallulah Bankhead, who goes the way of old actresses of the period and hits the horror trail as an unhinged, avenging mother called Mrs Trefoile.

Stefanie Powers plays Pat Carroll who arrives in London to get married to her fiancé Alan Glentower (Maurice Kaufmann) but first decides to visit the country home of religious fanatic Mrs Trefoile, the mother of her first fiancé Stephen, who died in a car accident. But Mrs Trefoile blames Pat for her son’s death and goes wacko when Pat tells her that she was not going to marry Stephen. She decides that Pat is never going to leave her dark house and starts to terrorise her to purify her sins.

Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling!) is a gripping Hammer Horror thriller evidently influenced by Psycho and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, with strong situations, memorable characters, some witty lines, an eerie atmosphere and plenty of gore. The two star actresses are excellent as they delineate the progression from apprehension to horror, and there are useful, well-played roles too for Peter Vaughan as the leering servant Harry and Donald Sutherland as the simple gardener Joseph.

The expert screenplay is by esteemed Richard Matheson, based on a novel by Anne Blaisdell. Narizzano’s direction is heated to the point of being over the top. But that proves a good thing and no one can say it isn’t lively.

Also in the cast are Yootha Joyce, Gwendolyn Watts, Robert Dorning, Philip Gilbert, Winifred Dennis and Diana King.

It proved Bankhead’s last film; she died in 1968, aged just 62, having made fewer than 20 movies in a long career, the most important of them being Hitchcock’s Lifeboat.

When Bankhead became ill and unable to work, she put up her salary as a guarantee that she would complete the film if she were not replaced.

A supposed animosity between Bankhead and Powers was invented by PRs to boost interest in the movie though they got along well and continued their friendship after filming.

In 2013, Powers played Bankhead in the play Looped, which takes place in a sound studio where the star is to record a line of dialogue to be matched to a scene on film – looping. In real life there was a problem with the audio when Bankhead says: ‘You must die! Die, my darling’ so she later had to loop the dialogue at a New York recording studio where she arrived inebriated four hours late, and took the rest of the day to dub the line.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3310

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