(1960)
Dir - David Eady
Overall: MEH
Director David Eady's adaptation of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac's 1952 novel Les Visages de l'ombre is a bog-standard blind man paranoia thriller, made more problematic by the fact that its protagonist is a bitter and aggressive curmudgeon long before he begins to suspect everyone around him of double-cross. To be fair, John Tully and Ephraim Kogan's script for Faces in the Dark gradually shifts the audience's sympathy toward John Gregson's recently blinded inventor/business mogul, but he is so crotchety and short-tempered the whole way through that even if he does end up being the victim of people who have had enough of his overbearing stubbornness, we still cannot feel the suspense of the situation due to his rotten personality. While Ken Hodges' black and white cinematography gets the job done and paints a world full of claustrophobic shadows, Eady only mildly revs up the tension and the "twists" are far from clever. Ultimately, it makes one wonder why nobody does away with Gregson's character far earlier or at the very least, punches him in the mouth.
(1965)
Dir - Gordon Hessler
Overall: MEH
German-born director Gordon Hessler's full-length debut Catacombs, (The Woman Who Wouldn't Die), has a formulaic enough premise that cobbles together Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques with Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Based on Jay Bennett's 1959 novel of the same name, it unfortunately suffers from a tame first half where the only unnerving thing that happens involves the romance between Gary Merrill's gold-digging uncle and his way younger than him niece, played by minor scream queen Jane Merrow. Eventually though, it goes through some bog-standard yet effective motions where both Merrill and Merrow become convinced that his dead wife and her dead Aunt's ghost or still-alive body is rapping at their door, standing over their beds, or turning on water faucets in order to torment them over their unwholesome affair. Of course, there are no genuine bump-in-the-night tomfoolery about as the predictable twist dictates, but Hessler at least stages these later moments with some subtle and creepy assurance.
(1966)
Dir - Roman Polanski
Overall: GOOD
Roman Polanski followed up his first English language full-length Repulsion with the more comedic Cul-de-sac; yet another collaboration between he and screenwriter Gérard Brach. Scoring Catherine Deneuve's sister Françoise Dorléac, tough guy character actor Lionel Stander, and Donald Pleasence in one of his finest performances as a docile Englishman living in a remote castle on the beach, it is more of a silly tragedy than a proper crime thriller. The film is set up as a typical "gangsters on the run" caper, except stereotypes are tweaked and the black comedy angle is made the primary focus. This is a story where the characters are not that bright, villainous, or courageous. Instead, they fumble through a situation that none of them wants to be a part of, haphazardly looking for ways out of it while growing more and more frustrated that things just keep staying stuck in the mud, (a literal metaphor is used for this where early on, the criminal's car gets cemented when the tide comes in around it). The three person cast all do funny and impressive work and Polanski forgoes the surreal claustrophobia of his previous movie so that the clumsy chain of events can unfold in a more grounded fashion.
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