Return of a Stranger

This is a sort of cut price CAPE FEAR from the Danziger Brothers, the people who also gave us a bargain basement Dirty Dozen, TARNISHED HEROES, though in both instances the films were released prior to the appearance of their more illustrious Hollywood counterparts, several years before in the case of HEROES.

Bill Le Sage's incongruously jaunty music over the opening credits hardly sets the tone for the grim events to befall Ray and Pam Reed, married with a young son, with Ray in line for promotion at an advertising agency. Pam begins to be stalked and menaced by a creep whom she realises with horror is the man who (apparently) raped her when she was just fourteen, and whom is still obsessed with her. Though he was convicted she has not told Ray about it and more surprisingly doesn't mention it to the police when they commence their inadequate attempts to protect her and the family. The rape incident is not referred to again, as if it wasn't a matter of that much importance, but as we've been hearing quite a bit recently, things were different then. Events build to a melodramatic and slightly absurd confrontation with the offender, and it also stretches credibility that this individual could carry out a murder by sabotaging a lift in an office block. Even so, this is a gripping little film. John Ireland was an actor who could be convincing even with unpromising material and Susan Stephen is sympathetic as Pam. There's even a little bit of location shooting albeit in one of the premises of ubiquitous nineteen sixties supermarket chain Fine Fare.