Blast from the Past: Tallulah Bankhead (Final Film)
In what would become her final feature, legendary theater actress Tallulah Bankhead dominates Die! Die! My Darling!, a B-level British horror thriller, from first fram to last.
Fanatic
U.K. theatrical release poster
Richard Matheson’s passable (if predictable) scenario is based on the 1961 novel “Nightmare” by Anne Blaisdell.
Stefanie Powers plays a young American woman, Patricia Carroll, who arrives in London to marry her lover Alan Glentower.
Patricia pays a visit to Mrs. Trefoile, the mother of her deceased fiancé Stephen, who had died in a car accident several years earlier.
Trefoile, who resides in a secluded house on the edge of an English village, is fanatically religious, and she blames Patricia for her son’s death.
When Patricia reveals that she had never actually intended to marry Stephen, Trefoile asks her servants, Harry and Anna, to hold Patricia captive so she can exorcise her soul.
After several attempts to escape the Trefoile house, one of which nearly results in Patricia’s being sexually assaulted by Harry, she is rescued by Alan.
In the end, Mrs. Trefoile winds up dead with a knife in her back, the same knife with which she had tried to murder Patricia.
Watch the young Donald Sutherland playing sort of the “house’s idiot,” a senseless brute.
Bankhead displays her considerable skills as a woman whose moods swings from sweet-tongued menace to maniacal blood-lust–but t wjat effect? At times, this schlocky picture, which is uneven in tone but never really svcary, feels like a star vehicle, a one-woman show
Curio Facts:
With this movie, Bankhead joined a group of major Hollywood stars (Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck), who resort to inexpensive horror pictires at the end of their careers because they could not get more honorable roles that suited their stature.
Looped, a 2010 Broadway play, used the production of this film as its settings,.
The 1984 single, “Die, Die My Darling,” by punk band the Misfits took its name from the U.S. title.
Cast
Tallulah Bankhead as Mrs. Trefoile
Stefanie Powers as Patricia Carroll
Peter Vaughan as Harry
Maurice Kaufmann as Alan Glentower
Yootha Joyce as Anna
Donald Sutherland as Joseph
Gwendolyn Watts as Gloria
Robert Dorning as Ormsby
Philip Gilbert as Oscar
Winifred Dennis as shopkeeper
Diana King as shopper
Henry McGee as rector
Credits:
Directed by Silvio Narizzano
Written by Richard Matheson, based on the novel Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell
Produced by Anthony Hinds
Cinematography Arthur Ibbetson
Edited by John Dunsford
Music by Wilfred Josephs
Die! Die! My Darling! (aka “Fanatic”) Silvio Narizzano’s Secluded House Horror, Starring Tallulah Bankhead, Stefanie Powers
Blast from the Past: Tallulah Bankhead (Final Film)
In what would become her final feature, legendary theater actress Tallulah Bankhead dominates Die! Die! My Darling!, a B-level British horror thriller, from first fram to last.
Richard Matheson’s passable (if predictable) scenario is based on the 1961 novel “Nightmare” by Anne Blaisdell.
Stefanie Powers plays a young American woman, Patricia Carroll, who arrives in London to marry her lover Alan Glentower.
Patricia pays a visit to Mrs. Trefoile, the mother of her deceased fiancé Stephen, who had died in a car accident several years earlier.
Trefoile, who resides in a secluded house on the edge of an English village, is fanatically religious, and she blames Patricia for her son’s death.
When Patricia reveals that she had never actually intended to marry Stephen, Trefoile asks her servants, Harry and Anna, to hold Patricia captive so she can exorcise her soul.
After several attempts to escape the Trefoile house, one of which nearly results in Patricia’s being sexually assaulted by Harry, she is rescued by Alan.
In the end, Mrs. Trefoile winds up dead with a knife in her back, the same knife with which she had tried to murder Patricia.
Watch the young Donald Sutherland playing sort of the “house’s idiot,” a senseless brute.
Bankhead displays her considerable skills as a woman whose moods swings from sweet-tongued menace to maniacal blood-lust–but t wjat effect? At times, this schlocky picture, which is uneven in tone but never really svcary, feels like a star vehicle, a one-woman show
Curio Facts:
With this movie, Bankhead joined a group of major Hollywood stars (Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck), who resort to inexpensive horror pictires at the end of their careers because they could not get more honorable roles that suited their stature.
Looped, a 2010 Broadway play, used the production of this film as its settings,.
The 1984 single, “Die, Die My Darling,” by punk band the Misfits took its name from the U.S. title.
Cast
Tallulah Bankhead as Mrs. Trefoile
Stefanie Powers as Patricia Carroll
Peter Vaughan as Harry
Maurice Kaufmann as Alan Glentower
Yootha Joyce as Anna
Donald Sutherland as Joseph
Gwendolyn Watts as Gloria
Robert Dorning as Ormsby
Philip Gilbert as Oscar
Winifred Dennis as shopkeeper
Diana King as shopper
Henry McGee as rector
Credits:
Directed by Silvio Narizzano
Written by Richard Matheson, based on the novel Nightmare by Anne Blaisdell
Produced by Anthony Hinds
Cinematography Arthur Ibbetson
Edited by John Dunsford
Music by Wilfred Josephs
Production: Hammer Film
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date: March 21, 1965
Running time: 97 minutes