The Second Great Hammer-Amicus Blogathon – Never Take Sweets From A Stranger (1960)

This is my first of 3 reviews for the The Second Great Hammer-Amicus Blogathon 2019 taking place this weekend and being hosted by Gill of WeegieMidget and Barry of Cinema Catharsis

Tnx for letting me partake Guys!

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“This isn’t an ordinary crime like burglary or a holdup. ” – Martha

Number of Times Seen – 1 (11 Jun 2019)

Brief Synopsis –After new residents of a small town suspect that there was inappropriate behavior between their 9 year old daughter and a wealthy old man in the community, they must find a way to convince the townspeople that this really happened.

My Take on it – Last year I chose not to participate in this blogathon because I am not a fan of horror, but both Barry and Gill convinced me that there are enough films to choose from that its possible to find non-horrors and that’s just what I did by choosing three thrillers to watch and review.

This is a film that I had never heard of before choosing to watch it for this blogathon based solely on its very strange and curious title.

This movie is able to take a topic that is usually not discussed in public (especially when this was made 60 years ago) and give us a very powerful and poignant tale that is unfortunately quite plausible and believable.

The story is set in a small town in Canada and the small town setting helps make this so much more powerful.

The suspense level of this film is set quite high and is pretty jarring at certain points.

Due to the censors of the time, they chose to leave many of the scenes quite ambiguous and that helps make an even larger impact on the way that this story can be perceived.

The use of completely unknown actors in the cast was a great choice since it allows us to get an even greater feeling that this is even more believable.

The best performance is clearly by Felix Aylmer who is able to make us see him as a very creepy old man without the need to utter a word .

Bottom Line – Amazingly powerful film that is able to take a topic that is usually not discussed and bring it to a very effective place where it can be seen how things work in a small town. The story is able to keep the suspense level quite high and the fact that they needed to leave many parts of the story very ambiguous due to the censors makes an even larger impact on the way the story is perceived. The unknown cast works in this film’s favor because it helps make the story even more believable. Highly Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – On its original release, the film made little impact at the box-office and its press was mainly negative. This was partly because at the time the issue of paedophilia and child sexual abuse was a great taboo, rarely referred to or spoken about, and merely to produce a film dealing openly with the issue was deemed sordid and distasteful. (From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy (9/10)