Despite the misgivings of her mum, shy, sheltered Brenda Thompson (Rita Tushingham) ventures into the wider world to find love and identity.
She leaves Liverpool and gets a job in a boutique in London, but with her plain looks and lack of worldliness, she doesn't fit into the swinging London scene. However she moves in with beautiful Caroline (Katya Wyeth) who is outgoing and proves surprisingly caring. When she returns a dog to androgynous looking Peter (Shane Briant), after a clumsy attempt to get to know him, she enters Norman Bates territory. Peter is a psychopath whose associations with women invariably end with their disappearance.
Nobody could play this kind of role better than Rita Tushingham, she's so believable, you feel for her character, but I don't like what happens to her, this is a nasty story.
Although you couldn't call it enjoyable, there is tension in the film. We know that Peter has issues. He hates beauty and destroys it whenever he gets the chance. His liking for Brenda is because she is plain. All the way through the film Brenda is described as plain and sexually unappealing. Rita Tushingham must have had a very grounded sense of self-awareness to play out this aspect of the story. She may not have had the classic prettiness of Katya Wyeth, but she had a unique look that made her a welcome presence in every film she was in.
"Straight On till Morning" is one of those quirky British thrillers of the late 60s and early 70s. It ends bleakly like so many others that seemed to fit a pattern around 1970, "Goodbye Gemini", "Permissive", "10 Rillington Place" and "Deep End" to name a few.
It's well made but there some lapses in logic. Peter uses a Stanley knife, a box cutter, on his victims long before 9/11 showed how lethal they could be. Peter works from home and while you would think he would have to redecorate after every rampage, there's not so much as a spot on a rug.
Hitchcock actually made a similar story in 1975, "Frenzy', and although it wasn't one of his best it showed what a film like "Straight On till Morning" lacks: a lighter touch and a villain with shadings; not just the one-note weirdness of Peter in this story.
She leaves Liverpool and gets a job in a boutique in London, but with her plain looks and lack of worldliness, she doesn't fit into the swinging London scene. However she moves in with beautiful Caroline (Katya Wyeth) who is outgoing and proves surprisingly caring. When she returns a dog to androgynous looking Peter (Shane Briant), after a clumsy attempt to get to know him, she enters Norman Bates territory. Peter is a psychopath whose associations with women invariably end with their disappearance.
Nobody could play this kind of role better than Rita Tushingham, she's so believable, you feel for her character, but I don't like what happens to her, this is a nasty story.
Although you couldn't call it enjoyable, there is tension in the film. We know that Peter has issues. He hates beauty and destroys it whenever he gets the chance. His liking for Brenda is because she is plain. All the way through the film Brenda is described as plain and sexually unappealing. Rita Tushingham must have had a very grounded sense of self-awareness to play out this aspect of the story. She may not have had the classic prettiness of Katya Wyeth, but she had a unique look that made her a welcome presence in every film she was in.
"Straight On till Morning" is one of those quirky British thrillers of the late 60s and early 70s. It ends bleakly like so many others that seemed to fit a pattern around 1970, "Goodbye Gemini", "Permissive", "10 Rillington Place" and "Deep End" to name a few.
It's well made but there some lapses in logic. Peter uses a Stanley knife, a box cutter, on his victims long before 9/11 showed how lethal they could be. Peter works from home and while you would think he would have to redecorate after every rampage, there's not so much as a spot on a rug.
Hitchcock actually made a similar story in 1975, "Frenzy', and although it wasn't one of his best it showed what a film like "Straight On till Morning" lacks: a lighter touch and a villain with shadings; not just the one-note weirdness of Peter in this story.