7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Georgie Likes Ducks...", May 31, 2009
This review is from: Twisted Nerve [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] (DVD)
Early slasher from the normally staid and respectable Boulting Brothers has Hayley Mills in all kinds of peril from the seriously loonie Hywell Bennett.
'Twisted Nerve' is a nasty film even by my standards. Despite a pre-credits disclaimer that it is in no way suggesting that mongolism is connected with psychotic or criminal behaviour - it proceeds to do just that.
Bennett just luurrves to stab his step-father in the stomach with a scissors and bash his horny landlady in the face with an axe, and his only motivation is a gnarled chromosome.
He flits between characters: from Georgie, a meek, jealous man-child; to Martin, an intelligent, confrontational spoilt boy.
Both are highly dangerous and both have the red-hots for the fetching miss Mills.
The rest of the cast support superbly: Barry (Bob Rusk) Foster plays a racist, sexist, drunken lodger; Billie Whitelaw is the ever-ready landlady and Timothy West excels as a wily, droll police inspector.
Each lends the movie extra worth and rising even though it rarely needs it. West is a particular joy.
A clue as to the true nature of 'Twisted Nerve' comes with the discovery that Leo Marks is the script-writer. This is the guy that wrote 'Peeping Tom' for Michael Powell and it's no great leap from that film to this one.
The similarities are obvious but no less interesting; only here it's a genetic defect that's the villain rather than systematic patriarchal mental abuse, but the resulting psychosis are pretty much the same - as are their outcomes.
Special mention to Bernard Herrmann's annoyingly appropriate theme music which is everywhere in the film: characters whistle it, it plays on the radio and while the 'kids' are getting on down at a party - guess what's spinning on the stereogram?
([edit:] If you think you've heard this devious motif before, Daryl Hannah's character whistles it as she walks down a hospital corridor in an early scene from 'Kill Bill')
'Twisted Nerve' is a disturbing thriller with handsomely offensive overtones. A poem with lines like: 'a ganglion gone awry' is quoted as an explanation for mass-murder, and mental illness is nonchalantly described as 'abnormal'. The science world has a breath-taking theory that a twisted nerve 'predestinates the sinner or the saint' and the always reliably sensitive police bark out phrases like: "watch your step - this chap's a nutter!".
This is what happens when people who just don't do this stuff - do this stuff.
Mills is desperately trying to shake her child-star/Disney reputation and the Boultings were usually to be seen making typically resolute British fayre like 'Lucky Jim,' 'I'm Alright Jack' and 'Carlton Browne of the F.O.'
It's probably the sheer scale of this departure that makes brutal-but-precise film-making like 'Twisted Nerve' appear so other-wordly and oddly attractive.
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Season: "Twisted Nerve" (Reg. 2), June 27, 2009
This review is from: Twisted Nerve [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] (DVD)
The Boulting Brothers, John and Roy had had a success with "The Family Way" in 1967 and teamed again their co-stars, Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett. Roy Boulting had started an affair with Hayley Mills, 20 years her senior and shocked her fans with a nude scene in "The Family Way."
When work was begun on a Hitchcockian story, "Twisted Nerve" (from a screen story and idea by Roger Marshall and Jeremy Scott) even had Bernard Herrmann do the score (Hitchcock's long-time collaborator), it began a 40 year sleep for the film until it was released in 2009 on Reg. 2 DVD in the "Boulting Brothers' Collection." Photography was by Harry Waxman.
"No puppet master pulls the string on high, a twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry, predestinates the sinner or saint."
This lead-in in 1968 established a cause, one of chromosomes and their mystery, then a curious mix of the youthfulness and then rare inclusion of male nudity amidst the Hitchcock catalog and had an even more delicious flavor of pop art, but the film was attacked because it gave the impression relatives of mongoloids were apt to be psychotic/criminal.
Very different. It is a new season.
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