Rent Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960)

Out of the Woods - Never Take Sweets from a Stranger review by CH

Many a film turns around a courtroom scene. Few, though, have mentioned one of the most dramatic, which occurs halfway through Never Take Sweets from a Stranger. Although filmed in and around Bray, this purports to take place in small-town Canada - and with a child in the witness box. She is interrogated - which is the word - by a brutish defence lawyer, his client the elderly, expressively unspeaking Felix Aylmer who has coaxed her and a friend into dancing naked for him in exchange for sweets.

A bold subject, even now six decades on, for this foray by Hammer into social issues. The young girl, well played by Jenina Faye, tells her headmaster father and mother what has happened while the town conspires to silence them, for the man in question is the elder of a family which has created the town's existence around its business.

In these eighty minutes characters are as sharply played as a narrative which plays well against the light and shade within buildings as well as without.

What's more, the soundtrack is by serialist composer Elizabeth Lutyens. As often, music that many might not be willing to hear on its own proves effective accompaniment to tensions which comes thoughout so well plotted a work. There is a forty-minute account of her as one of several extras which are a part of this cherishable disc (another extra is a revealing interview with Jenina Faye).

Curiously, two years later, Jenina Faye appeared in Don't Talk to Strange Men - another one to seek out amidst these English films which deserve to be better known than they are.