A dissolute drifter down on his luck, Jeff Farrell, is stranded in a cheap bar in France where he falls for Annette, the proprietor’s pretty stepdaughter. Annette’s stepmother Eve, gradually shifts the young man’s attentions to herself, rather than her stepdaughter, and together Eve and Jeff concoct a plot to help free Eve’s estranged husband from the institution in which he’s been confined as a homicidal maniac these past four years after committing the so-called “Acetylene Murder”, when used a blowtorch to kill the man who raped Annette. The idea is that Georges, the husband, will leave the country, but, unknown to Jeff, it’s not Georges who escapes but Henri, the guard who has become Eve’s lover . . .
Original Trailer
Production Details
Columbia Pictures Corporation presents A Hammer Film Production
Copyright MCMLXII Hammer Film Productions Ltd.
MPAA Approved Certificate
The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious and any similarity to the names characters or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional
A Hammer Film Production
RCA Sound Recording
Black & White 86 mins Hammerscope
Filming Began: 28th May 1962
UK Release: 20th May 1963
Studio:
MGM British Studios, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire
Location:
Montfrin Gard, France – Eve and Jeff meet at this town’s WWI memorial
Les Baux-de-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France – Quarry
Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France – Roman amphitheatre
Carmarque, France
Stills from film
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Original Poster
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Footnotes
The film was on Hammer’s 1960 schedule but for unclear reasons it was shelved. It would have starred Peter Cushing and George Sanders.
Norman Bird is dubbed by André Maranne.