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Jun 22, 2009 Web Exclusive By Brandon Cunningham

Generally, film studios have never accumulated a rabid fan base in the way actors or directors do, except perhaps for Hammer Films. This British company, primarily known for their gothic horror films produced from the late 1950s to the mid-70s, had a period of almost 35 years without a theatrical release, but they still have books and magazines being published about their output. Hammer also produced pirate films, comedies, actioners, and what they liked to call “mini-Hitchcocks.—essentially these were non-supernatural horror thrillers with twist endings in the vein of Psycho.

Crescendo, just recently released from the Warner Archive Collection, would fall into this latter category. Stefanie Powers stars as Susan, a music student (who doesn’t play music?) who goes to the south of France to stay with the widow of a recently deceased composer that she is writing her thesis on. She is apparently there to see where he composed and hear stories from the widow and their wheelchair-bound son Georges (James Olson). What she doesn’t know is that Georges is plagued by slow-motion nightmares of a shotgun-wielding doppelganger that pops up and takes aim at an unseen woman that Georges is kissing. And when Georges is not sleeping, he’s shooting up heroin. Something nefarious is also up with Georges' mother—like when Susan hears and thinks she sees someone playing piano in the house, Mom is there with a tape-recorded piece of music. And is that a bludgeoned mannequin sitting in a chair, or Susan’s imagination?  I won’t spoil the twist, but unfortunately it’s not very plausible, although the villain’s motivation is rather dark and icky.

The script, which was co-written by Jimmy Sangster (Hammer’s most prolific writer), never really takes off; it moves along at a snail’s pace and Susan’s character seems to exist only to conveniently move the story along to its illogical conclusion. In one scene Georges tells her to leave and that no matter what he says later, she shouldn’t listen. The next time they speak, he asks her to stay and to forget what he said before which she readily complies with and then for no apparent reason declares her love for him not long after that. Despite the poor script, Powers and Olson turn in fine performances. and Alan Gibson (directing the first of three films he would do for Hammer) brings some visual style to the dream sequences that’s a welcome break from the workman-like style of the main narrative.
The discs from the Warner Archive Collection are available by special order only from their website, and are sent in regular DVD snap cases with cover art and back cover synopsis (boasting that this is the “international version“). The discs have printed labels but are DVD-Rs. The picture quality, however, is very crisp, presented anamorphically, and looks much better than say a DVD-R product from a gray market distributor. Still, there are no audio options, and chapter stops are set indiscriminately at every 10 minutes. While it is not the best of Hammer’s output and not a recommended film to start with if you are interested in the studio’s filmography, it is nice for completists to be able to get an official release of this hard-to-find title. We can only hope that other studios with unreleased genre product will follow suit.  (www.wbshop.com/Warner-Archive/ARCHIVE,default,sc.html)

Author rating: 5/10