Straight on Till Morning is set in England during the early 70's as socially awkward teenager named Brenda Thompson (Rita Tushingham) decides to leave her mother & home in Liverpool to live in London where she hopes to find a suitable male to make her pregnant. First things first though & Brenda finds a job at a modern boutique & a place to stay but soon realises that her naive ways gets her left behind. While out walking one night Brenda finds a Dog named Tinker & the hears it's owner calling for it, Brenda notices that the guy just happens to be a handsome blonde young man & decides to kidnap the Dog as it has it's address on it's collar. The next Dday Brenda returns the Dog to the address & finds the handsome man whose name is Peter Clive (Shane Briant) & she admits that all she wanted was to ask him to make her pregnant, despite the somewhat strange request Peter agrees but on the condition that Brenda moves in & cooks & cleans for him which Brenda says yes to. However both are mentally unstable & the bizarre relationship heads for tragedy...
This English production was directed by Peter Collinson & is one of the more obscure film's to have been made by Hammer Studios who were far more famous for it's period Gothic horror Dracula & Frankenstein films rather than boring psychological thrillers such as Straight on Till Morning, I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that I hated this film & found it incomprehensible & throughly boring. At just over an hour & a half Straight on Till Morning felt to me like it lasted for days, I was on suicide watch by the end of it I was so bored & depressed! I just found the whole film impossible to get into, from the bizarre character's who act like aliens & are impossible to relate to from the odd Peter who seems to have no motives for anything he does & is given no back-story to Brenda who is just a walking robot showing no identifiable emotion at all, the whole concept of a teenage girl leaving home to travel to London to get pregnant is just difficult to take seriously & Straight on Till Morning is a deadly serious film with no humour whatsoever to lighten the gloom & dullness. Straight on Till Morning is incredibly slow & I mean slow, once the end credits an hour & a half after I started watching it I realised that next to nothing had happened & the abrupt & deeply unsatisfying climax which is ambiguous to say the very least doesn't help either in making you feel like you have seen a film with some meaning & substance. Straight on Till Morning never gets going as a psychological thriller, a character study, a contemporary drama or a horror film & I really disliked it & found nothing here that would pass for entertainment value as far as I am concerned.
Besides having a lousy script that offers nothing Straight on Till Morning has dated horribly, from the modern fashion boutiques to the hairstyles to the clothes to the cars to the interior decor this film looks like it was filmed on another planet & it's almost interesting to see the way society & tastes have changed in forty years (although I bet Straight on Till Morning looked horribly dated as early as the 80's it's such a product of it's time). The hilarious scene where Brenda goes out for a make-over & goes back to peter looking like a bad drag queen is probably the most memorable moment but for the wrong reasons. There's no on screen blood or gore, there's a bit of tame sex but no explicit nudity in what is a pretty uneventful film. There are various references to fairy tales & Peter is apparently obsessed with Peter Pan if that makes things any more exciting for you, the title Straight on Till Morning is actually a line of dialogue from Peter Pan not that most will be aware of it's significance & quite frankly I'm not sure of it either. Because of this crap title Straight on Till Morning has been retitled in various countries including Dressed for Death & Til Dawn Do Us Part in the US while Australia saw it under the title The Victim.
Filmed in London I suspect the budget for this was tiny & it show's, it's well made as far as it is but it's more of a history lesson than a film. I thought the acting was pretty bad all round, I don't know if it was just me but I thought everyone was terrible.
Straight on Till Morning is one of Hammer's least known films & it's no great surprise because it's crap & has zero entertainment value as far as I am concerned. I just couldn't find anything to relate to or hold my interest at all besides the 70's London decor & fashions which is bad if that's the only thing a film offers. I am trying to think of a worse Hammer film but I honestly can't right now.
This English production was directed by Peter Collinson & is one of the more obscure film's to have been made by Hammer Studios who were far more famous for it's period Gothic horror Dracula & Frankenstein films rather than boring psychological thrillers such as Straight on Till Morning, I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that I hated this film & found it incomprehensible & throughly boring. At just over an hour & a half Straight on Till Morning felt to me like it lasted for days, I was on suicide watch by the end of it I was so bored & depressed! I just found the whole film impossible to get into, from the bizarre character's who act like aliens & are impossible to relate to from the odd Peter who seems to have no motives for anything he does & is given no back-story to Brenda who is just a walking robot showing no identifiable emotion at all, the whole concept of a teenage girl leaving home to travel to London to get pregnant is just difficult to take seriously & Straight on Till Morning is a deadly serious film with no humour whatsoever to lighten the gloom & dullness. Straight on Till Morning is incredibly slow & I mean slow, once the end credits an hour & a half after I started watching it I realised that next to nothing had happened & the abrupt & deeply unsatisfying climax which is ambiguous to say the very least doesn't help either in making you feel like you have seen a film with some meaning & substance. Straight on Till Morning never gets going as a psychological thriller, a character study, a contemporary drama or a horror film & I really disliked it & found nothing here that would pass for entertainment value as far as I am concerned.
Besides having a lousy script that offers nothing Straight on Till Morning has dated horribly, from the modern fashion boutiques to the hairstyles to the clothes to the cars to the interior decor this film looks like it was filmed on another planet & it's almost interesting to see the way society & tastes have changed in forty years (although I bet Straight on Till Morning looked horribly dated as early as the 80's it's such a product of it's time). The hilarious scene where Brenda goes out for a make-over & goes back to peter looking like a bad drag queen is probably the most memorable moment but for the wrong reasons. There's no on screen blood or gore, there's a bit of tame sex but no explicit nudity in what is a pretty uneventful film. There are various references to fairy tales & Peter is apparently obsessed with Peter Pan if that makes things any more exciting for you, the title Straight on Till Morning is actually a line of dialogue from Peter Pan not that most will be aware of it's significance & quite frankly I'm not sure of it either. Because of this crap title Straight on Till Morning has been retitled in various countries including Dressed for Death & Til Dawn Do Us Part in the US while Australia saw it under the title The Victim.
Filmed in London I suspect the budget for this was tiny & it show's, it's well made as far as it is but it's more of a history lesson than a film. I thought the acting was pretty bad all round, I don't know if it was just me but I thought everyone was terrible.
Straight on Till Morning is one of Hammer's least known films & it's no great surprise because it's crap & has zero entertainment value as far as I am concerned. I just couldn't find anything to relate to or hold my interest at all besides the 70's London decor & fashions which is bad if that's the only thing a film offers. I am trying to think of a worse Hammer film but I honestly can't right now.