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MovieMail's Review
Another minor gem from Hammer, and further proof that that studio's non-horror output is ageing somewhat better than a lot of its Gothic movies.
Not that Taste is short on shocks, of course. A taut and intriguing psychological thriller, it sees a young, disabled woman, Penny (Susan Strasberg), going to live with her rich, estranged father on the French Riviera, ten years after she last saw him. The old man is absent when she arrives; his new, slightly unctuous wife (Ann Todd) explains he is away on business. But before long the already mentally fragile Penny bumps into his corpse in the summer house. Or did she just imagine it?
Tightly scripted by Hammer stalwart Jimmy Sangster and smartly directed by Seth Holt, it’s not going too far to rank Taste of Fear alongside some of the Hitchcock and Georges Clouzot movies that so clearly influenced it. If you suspend your disbelief in the right places, it’s very convincingly handled, and the heroine-in-a-wheelchair idea is a nifty stroke. Good performances all round too.
24-page illustrated booklet by Hammer Films' historian Marcus Hearn
Film Description
Hammer thriller in which, after narrowly surviving a drowning accident, wheelchair bound Penny Appleby goes to live with her widowed stepmother on the French Riviera, where she soon begins to question her sanity after seeing her father's corpse in the grounds.
