Cortechba Overrated

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Martin Bradley Highly controversial at the time of it's release and still disturbing today "Never Take Sweets from a Stranger" now feels like a polemic which somewhat dilutes its effectiveness as a thriller. It's extremely well-intended if a little on the dull side. The subject is child abuse; of course, being 1960 the abuse in question is never actually shown and is actually not even looked on as abuse by anyone other than the parents of the abused child.Felix Aylmer is admirably and bravely cast as the old man who gets a couple of little girls to dance naked for him while he gets off on it. Unfortunately Aylmer is a local bigwig while the family of one of the abused children are newcomers to this closed community who then gang up against them, taking the side of the abuser's family. (The family of the other little girl don't seem to want to know). Consequently the film is as much about the abuse of power as it is about sexual abuse.It was a product of Hammer Studios and sold as a 'horror' film but it's a very serious and sober picture, a message movie rather than an outright thriller. It is well written and Patrick Allen and Gwen Watford are fine as the parents while Niall MacGinnis as Aylmer's attorney and Alison Leggatt as the little girl's grandmother are outstanding. Today the film remains virtually unseen and while it may be no masterpiece at least you have to admire its intentions.

bkoganbing This Hammer film is set in Canada and it's always interesting to hear British players sound like they're from across the pond. Gwen Watford and Patrick Carter have come across so Carter can take a job as the new high school principal. One fine day the parents are startled to hear their daughter tell that she and a friend met a kindly old stranger who had them take off their clothes and dance in the nude.When they go to the authorities they've got quite a surprise from them in that they know who it is and are reluctant to take action. It's as if Ben Cartwright in his dotage was given to this behavior. Felix Aylmer who plays such classic good guys as Isaac Of York in Ivanhoe and Merlin in Knights Of The Round Table is our old pervert. Aylmer who possessed one of the most majestic speaking voices in British cinema is silent here.Eventually they get their day in Canadian court, but Aylmer and his family have juice. That only sets things up for the shocking climax.This Hammer film doesn't have the blood and gore associated with the name. It also doesn't really move until the climax. It was rather unnerving to see Felix Aylmer in such a role. It's a sub par film and a sub par Felix Aylmer.

Woodyanders Hammer is best known for their horror pictures, but this studio also made a sizable number of thrillers as well. This particular thriller is perhaps one of Hammer's most powerful and unsettling entries in the genre because it's about something that can actually happen -- and sadly does happen all the time even to this very day. The Carter family arrive in a prosperous small Canadian town. When sweet and innocent daughter Jean (a fine and touching performance by Janina Faye) accuses the elderly Clarence Olderberry Sr. of making her and her friend Lucille dance naked in front of him for some candy, her parents decide to take Olderberry to court despite the fact that he's the patriarch of an extremely rich and influential local family. Director Cyril Frankel, working from a gripping and intelligent script by John Hunter, handles the delicate subject of pedophilia in a commendably tasteful, nonexploitative, and straightforward manner; while the subject matter is undeniably unpleasant, it's nonetheless made tolerable by Frankel's wise decision to avoid explicitness in favor of suggestion instead. This film further benefits from uniformly outstanding acting from a top-rate cast, with especially stand-out work from Gwen Watford as the concerned Sally Carter, Peter Allen as the resolute Peter Carter, Bill Nagy as Olderberry's protective and formidable son Richard, Nial McGinnis as the shifty and aggressive defense counsel, Michael Gwynn as the shrewd and compassionate prosecutor, and MacDonald Parke as a wise no-nonsense judge. Felix Aylmer contributes a memorably creepy portrayal as the odious Clarence Olderberry; he manages to project a genuine sense of menace without ever uttering a single word. Moreover, we've also got a strong and provocative central message about the corruption of both justice and innocence and the abuse of power. But what really makes this film so potent and effective is the fact that it's firmly grounded in a thoroughly plausible everyday world populated by equally believable characters (Clarence in particular is an all-too-real human monster). The uncompromising grim ending packs a devastating punch. Both Freddie Francis' crisp black and white cinematography and Elisabeth Lutyens' moody score are up to par. An excellent, albeit quite harrowing and disturbing film.

Karl Ericsson Just as there is no difference between bad and good fudge, as some people might say, there is also no difference between good power and bad power. You see, power is the problem, period.This may be difficult for some people to understand, especially to those who pray to a good power as if there was such a thing. What makes such confusion possible is probably, more than anything else, the deterioration that the word "power" has undergone since the days of the old Greeks, as seen in Platon's dialogues, in which power was clearly and only what we now call "might" or "abuse of power" and not such things as "knowledge", "strength" and "ability", which may all be used for good as well as for evil purposes. For the old Greeks as well as for all of us when we are affected (and not carelessly affect!), power meant the possibility, lent by society, to rule over other person's lives, more or less gratuitously (depending on what kind of society). In short one might also say that "he or she, who cannot abuse power without punishment, simply have no power to begin with".In this film, a man of power is a pedophile and can allow himself much more than if he was a black man in the South, for instance. This is shown very clearly in this film, which makes this film rare, since it is an attack on power.In the fifties, in which this story takes place, there were many opportunities to work and less opportunities to control the working-force, which is probably why people still dared to speak up against power. This kind of film has become very rare these days. The film industry seems to have sold out to brainless entertainment or artsy-fartsy "literature" - it's safer that way, so most artists and journalists seem to argue.