The Collector (1965) It's no surprise that director William Wyler, Hollywood's supreme traffic manager of blockbuster epics, was offered "The Sound Of Music" as his next reserved seat extravaganza.
But nope.....he instead opted to film John Fowles 1963 novel, which pulled off the balancing act of reading like literary fiction and twisted thriller simultaneously.
No cast of thousands in sight here. But a British two-hander......between Freddie Clegg, a painfully shy, sexually repressed working class stiff......and the object of his delirious obsession Miranda Gray, a dazzlingly vivacious, beautiful young art student, raised in wealth and privilege.
As fate (and Fowles) would have it, Freddie wins a small fortune in the national football pool, enabling the non-verbal non-entity to purchase a remote old country mansion. Remote being the key requirement. And then he promptly stalks, chloroforms and kidnaps the hapless Miranda imprisoning her on his new estate in the hopes of making her his BFF.
Fat chance, Freddie.......
In short, fulfilling the wet dream of every involuntary celibate streaming porn (and other fluids) while living in their parents' basement.
Sound vaguely familiar? It's the primal story idea that launched a thousand similar novels and films, as well as pretty much the entire made-for-cable movie lineup of the Lifetime Channel.
What's even more disturbing.......it also served as a fountain of inspiration for actual real-life serial abductor-killers.
Food for thought and worry indeed, but since we're here to deal with the movie, let's get on with it.
The two leads? Wyler knew this film required complete immersion from an audience, so he wisely avoided his usual superstar casting in favor of two newcomers, Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar.
They don't let him down. Both step up and deliver superb work. Stamp, alternately pathetic and cold as a cobra, makes Freddie both mouse and monster at the same time...(not an easy task for even veteran actors.). And Eggar's Miranda, shocked, bewildered and terrified at her plight, will break your heart. It's her character's refined, upperclass gentility that only makes things worse for her........Miranda's hopeless in her attempts to feign friendship and seduction on her captor; the psychotic Freddie, fueled with pent up rage from eons of British class warfare, can see through her transparent condescension at every turn.
The film itself, as polished and fine-tuned as Wyler can make it, is almost undone by the blundering, inept score provided by Maurice Jarre, at the peak of his 'Laurence Of Arabia', Dr. Zhivago' hot streak. All through the film, Jarre never lets up with his too-sprightly, sing-song, hurdy-hurdy carousel tinkling. Only for a few isolated moments does he come to realize what kind of film he's scoring and throws in some ominous chords. The rest of the time, his relentless, bland noodlings grind on and on like an easy-listening FM station someone forgot to shut off.
Surprisingly, since the crumbling Production Code of movie conduct was still in operation, the film got away with duplicating the book's disturbing ending....(the kind of climax that Hitchcock could only dream of using in his half hour TV dramas). And like every other trope in the film, its finale became the template for countless other thriller/horror novels and movies.
For its ability to serve as such a wellspring for creative artists (and unfortunately the darkest of minds), "The Collector" stands as a seminal milestone......and well worth at least one watch by all cinema completists. 4 stars (****).
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