Paranoiac (1963)

Starring Janette Scott, Oliver Reed, Sheila Burrell, Maurice Denham, Alexander Davion
Directed by Freddie Francis
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young woman on the verge of a breakdown due to her brother's suicide eight years before is overjoyed when a man resembling him rescues her, but her family suspects he's an imposter.

One of Hammer Films' suspense thrillers, the picture is well photographed and directed, with a twisting screenplay by Jimmy Sangster.  Scott and Davion make a good screen couple, but Reed makes the most impact as Scott's drunkard brother, prone to screaming fits and acts of violence.  It's a difficult role to play without going over the top, but I think Reed succeeds, and adds a legitimately fearsome character to his filmography.  There's some good suspenseful scenes, particularly one involving an automobile falling over a crumbling cliff, which is well-staged by Francis.  I think that this production ranks well among the other thrillers Hammer produced, and has some memorably eerie and disturbing moments building up to the climax.

The Old Dark House (1963)

Starring Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Janette Scott, Joyce Grenfell, Mervyn Johns
Directed by William Castle
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A car salesman accepts an invitation from his roommate to visit his ancestral home, only to find him murdered when he arrives, and someone plotting to murder the rest of the family.

A collaboration between Castle, who by this time had directed some entertaining low-budget shockers, and Hammer Films, Britain's preeminent horror studio, sounds more intriguing than it actually is, and this one is a huge misfire, despite the skilled veterans in front of and behind the camera.  The picture's meant to be a horror-comedy, based on J.B. Priestly's Benighted, which spawned the classic 1932 version of The Old Dark House from director James Whale.  However, Robert Dillon's screenplay is nothing like the book or the previous film, instead borrowing some characters and recasting them in an Agatha Christie-like plot with attempts at humor that simply miss the mark.  The Hammer artisans behind the scenes do their part, with Bernard Robinson creating a mansion fitting the drab prison the script describes, as well as realizing character Potipher Femm's dream of a new Noah's Ark on a convincing scale.  The cast really can't be faulted, and I found them engaging, with Arthur Grant's photography bringing out the best in them- Janette Scott has never looked lovelier.  I also found the employment of macabre cartoonist Charles Addams in designing the film's main title sequence an inspired choice.  The source material however deserved a wittier touch then Castle and Dillon were able to deliver.

The Day Of The Triffids (1962)

Starring Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Mervyn Johns

Directed by Steve Sekely
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A meteor shower brings blindness that afflicts nearly all of the Earth's population, and also spores that grow into immense mobile plants that stalk human victims.

Howard Keel stars in this version of the science fiction novel by John Wyndham, which per my recollections of the book and its synopsis on Wikipedia, is not a very faithful adaptation, eliminating characters and condensing a bit too much, but still offers some effective scenes, with the triffid plants rendered about as well as one could expect for special effects of this era.  The filmmakers and actors do a good job of creating characters we can care about, and the eerie sound effects accompanying the triffids' movements are first rate.  However, the film would have been better had the screenwriters kept more of Wyndham's novel in their script.

Crack In The World (1965)

Starring Dana Andrews, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore, Alexander Knox, Peter Damon
Directed by Andrew Marton
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A scientist leads a project to drill into the Earth's crust for a new source of energy, but in so doing, creates a crack along an underwater fault line that starts to spread across the world.

I'm not a big fan of "end of the world" movies- there's just something somewhat self-defeating for me about watching a movie for escapist entertainment, and having to witness scenes of disaster and devastation that we fear could happen in some terrible future reality.  That's not to say this isn't a good movie, and it is, with good special effects, well-filmed disaster sequences, and dynamic theme music from composer John Douglas.  It's also neat to see Scott and Moore, who headlined smaller low-budget films, playing heroic roles in a large-scale action movie.  And while it may not be my particular cup of tea, one can admire the effort that went into this production.