There's certainly no time wasted starting the scares in this film. From the opening few seconds the atmosphere is rife with nastiness, and the amazing direction and camerawork are so good you feel like you are being bodily forced into a nightmare, such is the power of the filmmaking. Susan George is simply superb as Amanda, a fine performance that moves from edginess and distress to total hysteria. The house is well chosen, being dull and creaky but not ludicrously so, and the baby is a joy to behold. Ian Bannen contributes a genuinely unhinged turn as the madman and the scenes of sexual and physical violence are unbelieveably strong for the period. Fright may be seen exemplifying the nasty exploitation movie that began to infest British cinema in the early 70s as censorship laws were relaxed. It is true that the film is nasty and throws everything and the kitchen sink into its witches brew to provoke distress in the viewer. However, by the same token it can be seen as one of the rare example of pure, unhindered terror in cinema, where the characters are offered no hope, no salvation, no happy endings. By those standards, as an insight into a waking nightmare, it is one of the finest examples ever made. Peter Collinson is a director who never was appreciated enough in his lifetime; even his most popular movie, The Italian Job really only achieved classic status in the 1990s. In Fright he really proves himself as a director, and as a master of the camera, which he uses to create a gallery of some of the most bizarre and distubing shots to be found in the genre. If you want to be pleasantly frightened, this is maybe not the film to watch, but for genuine evil few films have captured it better.
