Pretty hitch-hiker Belle Adams (Hayley Mills) accepts a lift from a young man, Stephen Slade (Simon Ward). On their journey, they run into trouble with a pair of bikers, knocking one of them off his motorcycle. Fearing that the biker might be dead, the couple try to avoid the police, who have set up roadblocks to catch a dangerous lunatic who has escaped from a local mental hospital.
A mere nine minutes into Deadly Strangers and I guessed the twist, which didn't really help my enjoyment of the film. Director Sidney Hayers heaps on the red herrings, and at one point I considered whether he was pulling a double-bluff, before I decided that the film wasn't that clever. I was right.
However, despite Deadly Strangers losing much of its intended impact due to my infallible deductive skills, I still had a reasonable time, the two leads putting in fine performances, Sterling Hayden lending fine support as eccentric old man Malcolm Robarts, and Hayers keeping the action moving at a fair pace, even though the rather slight storyline would probably have been better suited to a shorter format (apparently, it was originally intended as part of a TV anthology series).
Those who enjoy their thrillers on the exploitative side will certainly enjoy the film's more salacious elements: a gratuitous shot of a nurse's knicker gusset as the psycho attacks her; Belle's flashbacks to her youth, when she was abused by her uncle; Stephen's predilection for dirty magazines and peeping on semi-naked women; and, of course, a chance to finally see Hayley Mills as many a schoolboy of the '60s and '70s surely fantasised about - in sexy underwear and topless!
A mere nine minutes into Deadly Strangers and I guessed the twist, which didn't really help my enjoyment of the film. Director Sidney Hayers heaps on the red herrings, and at one point I considered whether he was pulling a double-bluff, before I decided that the film wasn't that clever. I was right.
However, despite Deadly Strangers losing much of its intended impact due to my infallible deductive skills, I still had a reasonable time, the two leads putting in fine performances, Sterling Hayden lending fine support as eccentric old man Malcolm Robarts, and Hayers keeping the action moving at a fair pace, even though the rather slight storyline would probably have been better suited to a shorter format (apparently, it was originally intended as part of a TV anthology series).
Those who enjoy their thrillers on the exploitative side will certainly enjoy the film's more salacious elements: a gratuitous shot of a nurse's knicker gusset as the psycho attacks her; Belle's flashbacks to her youth, when she was abused by her uncle; Stephen's predilection for dirty magazines and peeping on semi-naked women; and, of course, a chance to finally see Hayley Mills as many a schoolboy of the '60s and '70s surely fantasised about - in sexy underwear and topless!