Watch Fragment of Fear For Free

One of my all time favorites.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Ex-junkie author David Hemmings (Tim) is chilling out in Italy and agrees to meet his aunt Flora Robson (Lucy) for lunch in Pompeii. I'm afraid that's not going to happen – Robson doesn't make it. She's been strangled. Hemmings wants to find out more about her aunt's life and pursues his own investigation back in London. However, there is a network called 'The Stepping Stones' that seems hell-bent on preventing him from discovering anything. He's a marked man unless he drops his curiosity.It's a tense film if a little complicated at times as you're never quite sure who's who. Basically, suspect everyone who Hemmings comes into contact with. The cast are good and the story unravels well but the ending just didn't do it for me. I wanted something better as things don't get resolved in the manner I had wanted. And the music by Johnny Harris is laughably inappropriate. I see that some nutter has previously referred to it as a superb music score. He clearly has no knowledge of how to score a film. The film leaves unanswered questions and that was a let-down for me.

***SPOILERS*** Recovering drug addict and best selling British author Tim Brett,David Hennings,is to meet his Aunt Lucy Dawson,Flora Robson, after church services while visiting her on vacation in Pompeii Italy but someone got to her first. Found strangled to death outside the ancient ruins of the city the police can't find any reason for her murder other then it was the work of a escaped or as of yet uncommitted lunatic from a local mental institution! Back in Britin Tim makes it a point to find his aunt's murderer or murderers who in fact has been shadowing him all the way there form Italy!The first tip that Tim gets to the reason why his Aunt Lucy was murdered is when he's confronted by this strange woman, Mary Wimbush, at his apartment building asking him to drop out of the case. It seems that she's somehow involved in Aunt Lucy's murder in her knowing the real reasons behind it. It's later that Tim is allegedly accused by the woman of trying to assault her by London police Sgt. Matthews, Derek Newark, and is threatening to press charges against him! Things get even stranger for Tim as it's later found out that the woman in question, Mary Wimbush, was found strangled! That after she later told Tim that she want's his forgiveness in that what Sgt. Matthews told him about her was all BS! In fact it's later discovered that this Sgt. Matthwes is no cop at all but an impostor who's working with this shadowy group of ex-cons called the "Stepping Stones" who were in fact founded and supported by Tim's late Aunt Lucy!As Tim soon finds out Aunt Lucy was involved in getting high IQ and highly educated ex-convicts high profile jobs in the government and business world by getting them fake identities and hiding their criminal records through her "Stepping Stones" project! With many of these persons now in very high and prominent positions she was blackmailing them to keep her from exposing their past and thus destroying their very successful careers! It's when Aunt Lucy went a bit too far that they, the ex-cons, took matters into their own hands. As for Tim who's soon to marry Juliet Briston, Gayle Hunnicutt, the woman who in fact found the murdered Aunt Lucy his meddling in the case and making things a bit hot for them has the "Stpping Stones" planning to totally discredit if not murder him. That's by making it look like he's back to taking drugs which would make whatever he say about them totally unbelievable!***SPOILERS*** David Hennings holds the plot together even when it starts to get a bit confusing as ex-drug addict Tim Brett who begins to realize that he's way over his head in trying to find his Aunt Lucy's murderer. Despite her kind heart Aunt Lucy's concocted a sinister plan to get revenge against the very persons, ex-convicts, whom she's been helping all these years. This stems from the murder of her husband of just two months in a home invasion over 20 years ago! Tim in trying to find his Aunt Lucy's killer opened up a while new can of worms that not only put his and his fiancée Juliet life in danger but in a strange way, through Aunt Lucy blackmailing the ex-cons as well as covering up their criminal records, justified her own murder!

For the most part, "Fragment Of Fear" is a gripping film. Although sometimes it can get too talky, it cleverly builds an atmosphere of justifiable paranoia, as we can see both why the hero feels so trapped and scared and why it is difficult for other people to believe his stories. But in the last 5 minutes or so, the film goes all vague and ambiguous on us, leaving us to interpret it all in our own way. The problem is that either way leaves too many unanswered questions. What does hold the film together is a committed central performance by David Hemmings; in what is largely an one-man-show, he creates a believable Everyman, a regular guy who gets in over his head. And an amusing credit for those who stick to the very end: "Colombus" is played by....a London pigeon. Who would have guessed? **1/2 out of 4.

This British - very British - thriller trades on the good name of David Hemmings, who at this time still had substantial "Blow Up" cachet left to p*ss away. His jaded ex-junkie finds his aunt murdered one sunny vacation, and sets out to find out whodunit amid many threatening overtures from big nasties. The main selling point here is a wild and wholly inappropriate soundtrack from one Johnny Harris - Hemmings is just shlepping around the funeral doing nothing in particular, and in comes that damned 'screaming flute' with attendant bongos. It's not embarrassingly bad, but it is dull for long stretches of dialogue in between its set pieces, and for all its attempts to be tense and/or creepy the plot's passing resemblance to Argento's "Deep Red" (also with Hemmings) does this no favours at all.