Tonight's Wednesday Weirdness is an interesting little Hammer suspense flick from 1960 originally called "The Full Treatment," but the title as released in the U.S. was changed to "Stop Me Before I Kill!" for some stupid reason!
This is a shot from the opening scene, and
the music from composer Stanley (The Crawling Eye) Black is swinging hard right out of the box! It might just be some of Stanley's best work!
The title is a bit of a misnomer, since the driver of this car just caused a head on collision, and the driver of the other vehicle died! If they really thought they needed to change the title so bad, they probably should have called it, "Stop Me Before I Kill
Again!" That would have made more sense!
This accident is especially troubling since the man behind the wheel with his head through the windshield was a professional Grand Prix race car driver! As you can see by the endorsement on the side of the Castrol truck, his name is Alan Colby, a pretty big cheese in the racing world! Alan Colby was played by Ronald Lewis who the following year had the lead role as Sir Robert Cargrave in William Castle's creepy film, "Mr. Sardonicus!"
After a year of recuperating, Alan and his wife Denise played by Diane Cilento are going on holiday to the South of France in an attempt to start a new life together. In real life, Diane Cilento was married to Sean Connery for 11 years! Despite everything, Alan and Denise are very happy together, but there's just one small problem!!
Ever since the accident, Alan has this overwhelming and compelling urge to strangle Denise! Neither of them know why, but for some damn reason Denise loves him enough to try and deal with it! Now that's one dedicated wife! If she's not careful, she's going to become
DEADicated instead!
It doesn't take long for the happy couple to meet up with Psychiatrist David Prade as portrayed by Claude Dauphin! This well tooled Frenchman also played 'The President Of Earth' in Roger Vadim's "Barbarella!"
Ahh, but it seems the good Doctor's intentions are not 100% honourable! As it turns out, Sean Connery was not the only one who thought Diane was hot, especially when she's out skinnydipping!
Alan and Denise go back to London to sort things out, and continue to try and put the pieces of their life back together! Alan sports the latest design in transistor radios around his neck! And you thought your ipod was cool!
After another attempt on Denise's life, despite misgivings, Alan finally gives in, and lets the Doctor, who also has a practice in London, try and find out what his freakin' problem is!
Alan is at least finally able to face his fears of driving, and gets set to drive in the Grand Prix again!
After many attempts, the Doctor finally breaks through using dream therapy and oxygen deprivation to get Alan to admit why he wants to strangle Denise so bad!
But then everything goes totally awry! The Doctor goes to Denise and Alan's flat, and Denise is gone, and all the evidence points in Alan's direction, including these surgical tools left to him by his father that are covered in blood and guts! Everything points to the fact that while Alan was blacked out, he killed Denise, cut her up, and disposed of the body in the trash chute! The Doctor takes Alan to the Nuthouse, but on the way, Alan escapes!
As it turns out, the Doctor wanted Denise for himself all along, and all alone! He staged the whole thing, and lied to both of them, and then talked Denise into going back to France with him while Alan was supposedly getting help after going completely mad, but Alan also had gone back to France, and after seeing them on a boat one day, followed them back to the Doctor's villa!
The Doctor finally admits to all his transgressions, and then turns the table on Alan, and gets his gun from him! As it turns out, the blood and guts were from his beloved cat! Yecch! What a freak!!
In the end, it probably wasn't such a good idea for the Doctor to ignore the sign that said the sky bucket tram that went back up to the Hotel was under repair! Yeah, the dirty bastard finally gets what he had coming to him, a free ride to Hell!!
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