The Full Treatment (1960)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Best movie ever!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I think I would have enjoyed this story better if I'd read the novel it is based on ("The Full Treatment") or as a radio drama play that trimmed down the extraneous elements and didn't exhaust my patience the way this movie does. The story had promise (in spite of a psychological premise that hasn't aged well since 1960), but in the end the director and the writer couldn't quite make it work.There is some excellent stuff here and there - I think that the opening shot that pulls back from a car radio playing a happy tune to seamlessly reveal a scene of disaster and carnage is good enough to redeem the problems with the remaining 2 hours of screenplay. But there's an awful lot to get through in the next 2 hours, and a lot of it is a slog.I've liked Ronald Lewis since I saw his role as the chauffeur in another Hammer production, "Scream of Fear!", and I when I saw that he was going to be prominently featured in this one, I was looking forward to seeing him stretch out. But his character is high-strung and unlikeable (even though it seems that his terrible behavior is caused by what we would now call "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder") and sometimes the director can't get him off the screen fast enough for me. Lewis is out there front and center, chewing the scenery in a thankless role and I can't help but wonder if this picture damaged his career, or at least slowed it down some. The other problem, of course, is that the whole "repressed memories leading to murder" thing has lost most of its credibility over the decades, sapping some of the drama and energy from the proceedings on screen. As this tale of psychodrama among the jet-set spins out, the thought kept intruding - "This has nothing to say to my life". Oddly, that never comes up in "Scream Of Fear!", possibly because the heroine is a "poor little rich girl" who is wheelchair bound and seemingly fragile. But the black and white photography is crisp.There are some great visual setups (oddly, the driving scenes are the least convincing scenes in the movie, ironic considering the Lewis' character is a race car driver). Diane Cilantro is adorable and a pleasure to simply behold (although her character is missing from the middle third of the movie).And there is a fascinating contribution from Francois Rosay who is on screen for maybe 5 minutes altogether, but who pulls the final climax together with a wordless performance that is in some ways the strongest in the movie. So, did I like it? Not nearly as much as the similar "Scream Of Fear!". Did the movie have a lot of things to redeem the problems with the plot and the unlikeable protagonist? You bet.

"Stop Me Before I Kill" or "The Full Treatment" is a 1960 film with a screenplay by Val Guest, who also directed.The story concerns a famous race car driver, Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis), who was involved in a terrible car crash with his wife Denise (Diane Cilento). He is unable to race, and he and Denise go to the south of France on vacation.Alan goes through swift mood shifts - the slightest word can set off his temper. And he keeps being tempted to strangle his wife - in fact, he nearly does a couple of times. This, of course, is where one has to suspend belief because why the heck would she stay with someone who has attempted to strangle her and whose temper flares at the drop of a hat? I understand women in abusive situations, but I don't know, my husband trying to kill me takes it to a new level.A psychiatrist they meet, Dr. David Prade (Claude Dauphin) offers to help. Alan is hesitant, but once back in London, where Prade has also returned, he agrees. At the end of the treatment, he feels that he is cured. He is able to get back on the racing track and has no temptation to hurt Denise.Right before he is to leave for a race, Alan wakes up and finds that Denise is not there. In fact, all the evidence points to the fact that she has been murdered. This was a very good story that suffered from an unbalanced script. The film went on too long, and the psychiatric scenes were endless. Diane Cilento is a beautiful and heartfelt Denise, Claude Dauphin is likable, and Ronald Lewis for me lacked subtlety in a difficult role. A good-looking man, in the beginning of the film, he reminded me of David Hasselhoff; fortunately, the resemblance faded somewhat.Sadly Ronald Lewis committed suicide in 1982, bankrupt and his career in the doldrums.In other hands and a bigger budget, this could have been an excellent film. However it's worth seeing for the story.

Val Guest directed this psychological suspense yarn about a race car driver(played by Ronald Lewis) who is having huge stress issues after nearly cracking up in a car race. He takes his wife(played by Diane Cilento) on a trip to the South of France for a vacation, but is still plagued by stress and other psychological issues, so agrees to see a psychiatrist(played by Claude Dauphin) but complications ensue, as things(of course) are not all that they seem. Misfired attempt at suspense has a good cast but is fatally overlong and far too talky, with nothing in the story justifying this over-length, as film becomes quite tedious.

Psychological thriller from producer-director Val Guest could perhaps use more thrills and less psychology. Racecar driver fights against getting psychiatric help after a road accident--which killed the other driver--has left him badly shaken; his spouse begs him to reconsider, particularly after she becomes the target of her husband's subconscious rage. Adaptation of Ronald Scott Thorn's novel "The Full Treatment" (the movie's alternate title), by Thorn and Guest, has some tart dialogue and solid performances, and looks great as photographed by Gilbert Taylor, but the midsection of the film is redundant. Guest turns the plot-screws with careful deliberation, but is too slow in getting this web untangled. **1/2 from ****