Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, king of the recycled thriller, here does an uncredited rewrite on Josephine Tey's novel "Brat Farrar", with siblings Janette Scott and Oliver Reed on the verge of sharing the family fortune when their brother, long thought a suicide, returns to the fold. Hammer Films production, distributed stateside by Universal, eschews the Gothic castles and ghouls for psychotic relatives--and when Oliver Reed gets wound up, there's hardly anyone more off-balanced. Melodrama is certainly crisp and well-mounted, balancing shudders with general hysteria, but these mad, maddening characters do not merit much interest. ** from ****
Review of Paranoiac
