Synopsis
Terror... Tension... Almost More Than The Heart Can Bear
A man with an asthmatic voice telephones and assaults clerk Kelly Sherwood at home and coerces her into helping him steal a large sum from her bank.
Experiment in Terror
Cast
Glenn Ford Lee Remick Stefanie Powers Roy Poole Ned Glass Anita Loo Patricia Huston Gilbert Green Clifton James Al Avalon William Bryant Dick Crockett James Lanphier Ross Martin Joanne Bahris James T. Callahan Bob Carraher Mario Cimino Fred Coby Barbara Collentine George DeNormand Frederic Downs Don Drysdale Harvey Evans Dennis Falt Harold Goodwin Claire Griswold Warren Hsieh Judee Morton Show All…
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Alternative Titles
The Grip of Fear, Escravas do Medo, Operazione terrore, El mercader del terror, Chantaje contra una mujer, Uma voz na escuridão, Próba terroru, Kauhun lunnaat, Allô... Brigade spéciale, Chantaje Contra Una Mujer, Der letzte Zug, Эксперимент с ужасом, 恐怖实验, 엑스페리먼트 인 테러, 追跡, Xantatge a una dona
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Theatrical
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USA
06 Sep 1962
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Germany16
07 Sep 1962
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France
Releases by Country
France
07 Sep 1962
- Theatrical
Germany
06 Sep 1962
- Theatrical16
USA
12 Apr 1962
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
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For some reason, this film made me dislike Edwards’ The Pink Panther even more, probably because it's clear the director knows how to shoot and direct some really thrilling scenes and sustain the suspense throughout. Although this film’s running time does make the tension fluctuate mostly for certain scenes that feel rather redundant and drag the movie down. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take much, as scenes like the big finale or the opening make it up, especially the former with its incredible lighting work that evokes the best of film noirs as our villain hides behind the shadows, becoming a dark figure that torments our poor lead. The closeup we see Remick’s incredible expressive work as she conveys the horror through…
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"I don't want to hurt you, I just want to talk to you."
Blake Edwards was a genius, but he was not a disciplined one. Even his best, most iconic movies have a meandering, free-form quality that probably kept them from being focus group or studio exec darlings even on the (rare) occasions when they ended up huge commercial smashes. Here, though, he's on his extra-special best behavior, and even though this is over 2 hours there's not an ounce of fat on it - no romantic subplot, no comic relief, no bullshit of any kind (Edwards does find room for some archival Keystone Kop action in a movie house though, just so you don't get confused and think you're…
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Ahh films, my old friends. Nice to be reacquainted.
The very late 1950s and early 1960s were a fascinating little period for cinema. They were a strange sort of no man's land between the Hays Code restricted decades that had gone before them, and the less censorship happy decades that would lie ahead. You had lots of films that dallied a little bit with being more adult in their content, language and tone, but very few that would really go for it.
The presence of Lee Remick in Experiment In Terror reminded me of another film she was in from roughly around this time, namely the marvellous Anatomy Of A Murder. That was another film that tested the waters for…
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Cinematic Time Capsule
1962 Marathon - Film #41”She lives in Twin Peaks… the street’s a dead end”
… and this immediately became the coolest film that the 16-year-old David Lynch had ever seen.
Seriously, this Blake Edwards experiment in Hitchcockian noir contains more Lynchian breadcrumbs than the floor of a Double R Diner's pie eating contest.
When an asthmatic killer named, ‘Red’ Lynch terrorizes a bank teller and coerces her into robbing a bank it’s up to Agent John "Rip" Ripley to put the pieces together and catch the killer before he kills again.
”I’ve already killed twice so I won’t hesitate to do it again”
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So Blake Edwards really throws a lot of noir tricks on the screen in making this a stylish San Francisco 60's thriller plus Lee Remick(Kelly Sherwood) does a solid job conveying the fear to sell the tension and Henry "The Man"cini brings in a solid score but I don't know if I got the killers modus operandi. I mean he is very conflated of both evil and good. I kind of wish Kelly didn't have to rely on men to help her and did something defiant on her own to take back the reins of control in her life. We did get a final sequence in Candlestick Park that was pretty cool though. All in all it was serviceable but I don't know if the experiment was a complete success.
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Experiment in Terror is an oddly surreal slice of post noir. A great start - which includes the beautiful hauntingly plodding theme tune - leads us onto a tense sequence in which a young woman is accosted by an unseen asthmatic assailant who apparently wants her to help him rob the bank she works at. The plot then expands to include the FBI and other threads and it morphs into a police procedural; retaining some interest but losing most of the tension in the process. The middle section in particular meanders badly - it's a shame too because the base plot and characters are fascinating. A surprisingly grisled looking Glenn Ford is the standout of the cast and he plays…
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Blake Edwards monochromatic thriller is a beautifully shot, tense film filled with excellent performances. Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick) works as a bank teller. One night upon returning home she's threatened by a stranger known as 'Red' (Ross Martin) in her garage, she's then forcibly told to rob her bank of $100,000 or she and her sister will be murdered by him.
She then manages to get the word out to an FBI officer John 'Rip' Ripley (Glenn Ford) without Red knowing. Rip then advises Kelly on what to do and how to act in order to lure Red out and catch him. The film does a great job of maintaining it's tension even though the film is slightly overlong and…
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“Experiment in Terror” feels so formative to David Lynch’s work, it’s like the Rosetta Stone to all his major noir influences. For any of his fans, it’s a must-watch that feels as much of a treat as seeing a movie of his that has been just-unearthed.
“Experiment” could be considered the style-peak of the noir genre, until Lynch would come along some years later and use it as inspiration to his own tonal ends. Any frame in “Experiment” doesn’t just feel encompassing of noir’s definitive aspects, but also a fresh twist on how to newly convey a classic atmosphere.
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Twin Peaks? Garland?? Lynch??? Okay, the Lynch part is just a wild coincidence, but the influence Experiment in Terror had on David Lynch and Twin Peaks is pretty undeniable. Even the guitar strums of Henry Mancini's haunting score seem to be transplanted to the Twin Peaks universe. Of course, there is no sign of a Black Lodge in Blake Edwards' surreal film noir, but there is a heavy air of one - our "asthmatic phantom" being an early incarnation of BOB. Twin Peaks aside, Experiment in Terror is a mostly thrilling and highly stylish film noir that could have used some reining-in. Near the middle of the film, it loses a lot focus on the plight of Kelly Sherwood (Lee…
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I finally saw this film for the first time, though I have an odd prior history with it. Years ago a good friend and Mancini completist ripped me some soundtracks from original vinyl LPs. I would listen to them with headphones while I worked. Experiment in Terror, with its spare, often 1-finger, haunting urgency, became a favorite. I’d never even heard of the film before or since until Criterion Channel’s Columbia Noir series. What a wonderful surprise. First, to finally see the images that inspired the music and how perfectly the score enhanced them. And second, how great a movie is this?
This film is a real Blake Edwards outlier. It’s a taunt and measured psychological thriller. He was prone…
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Between this and Wait Until Dark, we may have to start calling him Henry GOATcini from now on—a blue-chip score, especially that scorcher of a main theme.
Lee Remick lives in Twin Peaks (not that one) working as a bank teller, when she begins being tormented by Joe Wheeze who wants her to rob the bank she works at for him. And he’s a real creepy dude—there’s a scene in a bathroom that is uncannily terrifying. Super slow and dry at times? Yes, though overall I would say this Experiment in Terror succeeds more often than it fails.
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eerily similar to kurosawa’s high and low from the following year and also wild that blake edwards made THIS just one year after breakfast at tiffany’s...now that’s what I call range.
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