The Full Treatment
United Kingdom
1960
107 Min
Black and White
2.35:1
English, French
Synopsis
Val Guest travelled to France for this satisfyingly-plotted film from Hammer’s period of psycho-thrillers. Adapted from Ronald Scott Thorn’s novel by the author and Val Guest, the film echoes Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and received an X certificate due to some brief nudity, but on release The Full Treatment was greeted by a lacklustre critical and commercial reception. The handsome Ronald Lewis is altogether convincing in the central role and is ably supported by the attractive Diane Cilento and Claude Dauphin.
Grand Prix driver Alan Colby and his newlywed French bride Denise are plagued by marital woes when a freak car accident causes the concussed Colby to have impulses to strangle his bride every time they make love during their belated honeymoon on the French Riviera. On holiday they meet suave French psychiatrist Dr. Prade who takes an immediate interest in Colby’s condition. When the couple return to London, Colby once again attempts to strangle Denise, and subsequently becomes a patient of Prade who endeavours to break down his mounting wall of psychosis before the seemingly inevitable tragedy occurs.
Prade makes Colby relive the day of the crash under sedation and after numerous sessions they finally appear to be making significant progress, but when Colby wakes one morning in his hotel room he is greeted by Prade who leads him to believe he may have murdered his wife. As Colby is being driven across London to a mental clinic by Prade, he knocks the psychiatrist unconscious and flees to the South of France. —Britmovie.co.uk
Director
Val Guest
Val Guest (11 December 1911 – 10 May 2006) was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.
He was born Valmond Maurice Grossmann in London, England, and educated at Seaford College. Guest’s initial career was as an actor, appearing in various productions in London theatres. He also appeared in a few early sound film roles, before he gave up an acting career and moved into writing. For a time in the early 1930s he was the London correspondent for the Hollywood Reporter trade paper, before he began working on film screenplays for Gainsborough Pictures, his first being No Monkey Business in 1935.
He wrote screenplays for the rest of the decade, including working on scripts for Will Hay, as well as some film scores, before in the early 1940s becoming a director, with his debut feature in this… read more
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Daniel S.
13Dec11
** 1/2 British psycho-thriller produced by Hammer Films. Sex with her husband means certain death for poor Denise Colby so she restrains herself for the time being and contents herself with nude sea bathing in the Mediterranean while Doctor Prade's concupiscent binoculars are observing her (gasp!). After these exciting beginnings, I admit that I nearly felt asleep during Allan Colby's psychoanalysis before waking up for the finale. In short, the film is 30 minutes too long but will certainly please amateurs of British thrillers.
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