Fright Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Fright Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson March 28, 2021

Fright (1971) is a pretty effective and early example of the psychopath-stalks-the-babysister subgenre of horror films that flourished in American cinema beginning in the late Seventies and continuing well into the Eighties. This sixth feature by British director Peter Collinson was distributed by British Lion Film, the same company that released Don't Look Now and The Wicker Man in 1973. Fright opens with a nighttime shot of a girl walking a dirt road by a woods. Amanda (Susan George) is a college student majoring in psychology who's been hired by Helen Lloyd (Honor Blackman) to babysit her three-year-old son, Tara (played by Tara Collinson, the director's son.) Ms. Lloyd lives in an overgrown manor that secluded from other houses in a remote rural area in England. She and her fiancé Jim (George Cole) are getting ready to go out to a town inn for cocktails. Ms. Lloyd is edgy and nervy about this evening. It's not that she's worried about leaving her boy with Amanda but something else is bothering her. She's annoyed, for instance, that the cat has leaped into the crib with Tara. George tries to relax both ladies by offering them Sherry drinks. Ms. Loyd begins to loosen up and leaves the phone number to the inn with Amanda.

While Tara sleeps upstairs, Amanda is a little startled to hear the doorbell ring. It's Chris (Dennis Waterman), Amanda's wannabe boyfriend who says he got Ms. Lloyd's address from her mum. Amanda would much rather he go home but he persists and wants to make small talk on the couch. His cozy chatter turns concupiscent as he clearly wants to seduce her. She initially resists but becomes turned on by his advances. But Chris then alarms Amanda when he tells her about an incident that occurred a year ago in the house. Amanda briskly sends him out the door. Moments later, the doorbells rings again and when Amanda sees a stranger's face in the window, she screams and calls the inn to speak with Ms. Lloyd. The telephone line gets cut off as Helen picks up the phone. Amanda opens the doors to see a bloodied by not dead Chris plunge towards her. A stranger posing as a neighbor comes through the doorway offering his assistance.

Fright is the most effective during its first half when the mood is creepy and mystery-laden. Collinson and his cinematographer Ian Wilson make the proceedings taut and suspenseful. As he'll do in Straight on Till Morning a year later, Collinson films a lot through and around objects. For example, Wilson lenses the spiked gates and railings around Ms. Lloyd's house. He also shoots through the bars of Tara’s crib and the bars of the stair banisters. When Amanda makes tea in the kitchen, Wilson films one angle on one side of her face before switching to the other. Collinson amplifies the tension through sound design. The water drips from the taps and the kettle shrieks. When Amanda believes she spots a man spying on her from a window, she goes out to the back where the rotating washing-lines squeak.

Unfortunately, Fright transforms into a by-the-numbers home-invasion thriller in its second half. The maniac, who escaped from a mental asylum some miles away, reveals his purpose for coming to the manor. Poor Amanda has the buttons from her cashmere sweater unbuttoned by two men. (Susan George would later play the rape victim in Peckinpah's Straw Dogs in the same year.)

It's unknown if John Carpenter and Debra Hill saw Fright before they made Halloween but the Collinson picture was a forerunner. For instance, Amanda watches The Plague of the Zombies (1966) on Ms. Lloyd's TV as the lunatic waits outside to make his move. In a similar vein, Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) watches The Thing from Another World (1951) in her parents' living room. Across the street, Lindsey's brother Tommy (Brian Andrews) and his babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) look at Forbidden Planet (1956) together. The scares and thrills on the TV screens will portend the events in Halloween as the lurking figure of The Shape watches them from outside. But there's an important difference between Fright and Halloween. One of the reasons why the latter remains the legendary film that it is owes to the sustained suspense and lingering dread that Carpenter maintains throughout. The Shape surreptitiously roams around the houses in the Haddonfield neighborhood, waiting to make his move with patience and calculation. Fright drags out the killer-pursues-the-babysitter thread into an elongated second act. The third act becomes a preposterous standoff outside the Lloyd home where an inept police force attempts to negotiate with the hostage taker.

Fright Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream Factory has issued Fright on US Blu-ray using the MPEG-4 AVC encode. The movie appears in the aspect ratio of 1.66:1 on this BD-50. All of Fright was shot during the late evening hours so the picture has a consistently dark appearance. The brightest scenes are inside the swingers' club where the overhead lights illumine the red velvet wallpaper that Collinson loved to show (see Screenshot #7). Detail on dimly lit close-ups and extreme close-ups is fine (see frame grab #s 2, 6, 16, and 17). A thin layer of grain graces the image. Thankfully, I didn't notice any mosquito noise. This transfer is sourced from a very good print that StudioCanal also put out in the UK in 2019. Scream has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 36000 kbps.

Scream provides a dozen scene selections for the 87-minute feature.

Fright Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1567 kbps, 24-bit). Source-related anomalies are largely absent from the monaural mix. Spoken words are intelligible. Pitch varies in range. Nanette sings a ballad called "Ladybird" for the opening and closing titles. It sounds fine but has limited range due to the age of the original recording. Harry Robertson's score anchors the film with skill. Musical high notes are accented well along the front channels.

Scream delivers optional English SDH for the feature.

Fright Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

StudioCanal's Vintage Classics Blu-ray includes an exclusive seventeen-minute interview with Susan George and an abridged five-minute interview with Kim Newman that's presented in full on this Scream disc. SC's behind-the-scenes stills gallery displays nine images, twenty-few fewer than what's included here.

• NEW Fright Nights – An Interview with Author/Film Historian Kim Newman (18:50, 1080p) - Newman links Fright to the British TV/film works written by Brian Clemens and to some movies of the 1940s. He explains the setup of Fright and examines its narrative construction. Newman looks back at Susan Georges' career and surmises that she inherited roles that Judy Geeson passed on. Additionally, he discusses the supporting actors in Fright. He also spends time unpacking Peter Collinson's films and his significant contribution to British cinema's version of giallo. He wonders if Collinson had lived beyond his untimely death in 1980 if his career would have went in a similar direction to that of J. Lee Thompson and Michael Winner. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailer (1:22, 1080i) - Allied Artists' official trailer for Fright presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The image appears horizontally stretched.

• Still Gallery (2:36, 1080p) - a slide show consisting of thirty-four distinct images that capture the production and ad campaign for Fright. The show depicts production stills, lobby cards, and poster sheets. These are culled from British, American, and foreign marketing materials.

Fright Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fright is perhaps an accidental influence on the horror and slasher genre in the States. It was a progenitor to the likes of Halloween (1978) and When a Stranger Calls (1978). Some may call it a sexploitation picture although it's important to remember that it qualified for a PG rating when it was finally shown in America in the spring of 1972. Susan George delivers a thoroughly admirable performance and makes Amanda into a strong heroine. Over half of Peter Collinson's features (nine out of sixteen) are available on Blu-ray. I hope that more studios and labels release the rest of them, beginning with The Penthouse (1967). Fright is essentially a tale of two movies, with the first half definitely the strongest. Scream Factory's Blu-ray delivers an excellent transfer and solid lossless audio. Extras contain a nearly twenty-minute interview with Kim Newman, a decent stills gallery, and the trailer. I've seen the recent interview with Susan George that's on the UK StudioCanal and it's very good. The SC only features nearly a third of the Newman interview and the image gallery is shorter, however. I believe the Scream offers the better overall package. A MILD RECOMMENDATION for Fright.