NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER (1960)

This sincere Hammer drama is barely seen these days, a shame as its makers approached the material – ripe fodder for exploitation – with maturity and fashioned a gripping little film. Lantern-jawed actor Patrick Allen (who would work for Hammer on several other films including CAPTAIN CLEGG and FRANKENSTEIN & THE MONSTER FROM HELL) plays Peter Carter, recently arrived from England to a small town in Maritime Canada as the new high school principal. Along with him are wife Sally (Gwen Watford), nine year-old daughter Jean (Janina Faye), and mother-in-law Martha (Alison Leggatt). When the film opens Jean is playing with her friend Lucille (Frances Green) when the latter tells Lucille she knows of a place where they can get all the candy they like. That evening Jean is telling her parents how she stepped on a nail, and in the process innocently relates how both she and Lucille paid a visit to old Clarence Olderberry (veteran actor Felix Aylmer)’s house. There, in exchange for candy, he had them strip naked and dance around in front of him. Peter and Sally are understandably horrified, and when they attempt to report this suddenly find themselves being shunned within the community as outsiders. Olderberry founded the sawmill that brought financial stability and employment to the area, a business now run by his less than considerate son Clarence Jr. (Bill Nagy). Peter learns there have been other incidents with the old man, and that he spent time in a local facility – a private institution funded by Oldeberry money thus no records are forthcoming. Nobody seems keen to help, and Peter’s position with the high school is directly threatened by Clarence Jr. Undaunted they push ahead with a trial, but when Olderberry’s ruthless attorney begins demolishing young Jean on the witness stand the parents reluctantly withdraws charges to spare her further emotional harm. Peter decides to resign from the school and take his family elsewhere. On their last day in town Jean and Lucille are playing in the nearby woods when they run into the old man, who produces a bag of candy from his pocket. The girls flee deep into the woods, with the old man following behind. By nightfall the girls haven’t returned home, and their families begin a frantic search.

Based on the Roger Emerson Garris play “The Pony Cart”, NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER could have easily pushed forward its unsavory elements and reduced the story to lurid melodrama. Instead screenwriter John Hunter and director Cyril Frankel (a television vet who later made the occult thriller THE WITCHES for Hammer) spend most of the movie depicting how the town reacts to the old man’s pedophilic tendencies. Some cast scrutiny on the children that they are lying; some consider this merely a problem caused by outsiders. Most interesting is the reaction, noticeably among those in positions of authority – that despite previous problems perhaps the greater damage would be the potential loss of money within the community should something happen to the all-powerful Olderberry family. Even those people who are parents seem less concerned with the safety of their children than they are with their own well being. The film’s court case is presented concisely and strongly; throughout the film the old man never speaks – he may be in fact senile – but with a gaggle of reporters and gawking spectators the spotlight is thrown not on the perpetrator, but the victim. Without dialogue to speak Felix Aylmer must convey his performance through body language and facial expression. In the court he appears confused, sad. He’s not allowed (at least for the majority of the film) to be seen as a straight forward boogey man, and it’s only in the last section of the film where it seems his illness surfaces as an uncontrollable animal reaction beyond his own comprehension. Instead of using one character as the subject of villainy in the film, NEVER rather examines how greed, shame, and guilt among the citizenry become a more potent evil. That a community would not protect its children from harm is the film’s most shocking indictment.

The cast – which also includes Michael Gwynn, Niall McGinnis, MacDonald Parke, Budd Knapp, Vera Dyke, and Estelle Brody – are all fine, with perhaps the best work being done by Janina Faye. The scene where she casually tells her parents of what transpired at the Olderberry house is done with such innocence, and her scenes on the witness stand are the film’s dramatic highpoint. A couple of years later she costarred as Howard Keel’s young companion in DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, went on to SCHOOL FOR UNCLAIMED GIRLS (1969) and more recently did a short film with Ingrid Pitt called GREENFINGERS. Elisabeth Lutyens, one of the most underrated film composers of the last fifty years, contributes another fine score. I believe this was the first (and last) film that Freddie Francis photographed for Hammer, right around the same time as his Academy Award winning work on SONS & LOVERS. He would work again for Hammer not long after, but in the director’s chair. His moody black and white cinematography enriches the movie, with the flight through the woods being somewhat suggestive of NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Released in the UK as NEVER TAKE SWEETS FROM A STRANGER, this was handled in North America by Columbia Pictures. I’m not sure what kind of marketing push they gave the film but it hardly met with the success of Hammer’s gothic horrors. Like another Hammer film that Columbia handled – the excellent science fiction drama THE DAMNED (1963) - this is a seldom seen picture deserving of a larger audience.

. . . thanks for the review; this is one Hammer I have never seen . . . apparently, it ran into quite a bit of trouble in the States as it was rejected by the Production Code Administration as they found it violated (to quote Variety from 1960) "the edict about the depiction of sexual perversion" - due to this situation, the film seems to have played in only a few art houses during its brief spin around the country (HAMMER FILMS, AN EXHAUSTIVE FILMOGRAPHY) . . . the further sad news is that the (at that time) powerful National League of Decency came out a year or so after Columbia had this trouble getting the film released and were quite supportive of how the "perennial social problem" was treated in this film . . . by the way, if you missed it, Anchor Bay put out a nice DVD of another excellent Hammer non-horror project from the same year called HELL IS A CITY, directed by the reliable Val Guest, and starring Stanley Baker, Donald Pleasence, and Billie Whitelaw (the first Hammer nude scene in a British print) . . . this is a Manchester set crime thriller about the hunt for an escaped killer and seems to have enjoyed the Production Code's approval in America as it only concerned itself with people being shot, beaten, and killed . . .

Yes, vastly, incredibly underrated.

I had never seen it until I realized (mirabile dictu) we had a gorgeous 35mm print in the archive here at the university. It's really worth a look and would make a nice double feature with the similarly-themed THE MARK, another British film from almost the same time.