Watch The Strange Awakening For Free

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Did you people see the same film I saw?

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Peter Chance (Lex Barker) is attacked and left out cold by a hitchhiker while driving in the south of France. He awakes and finds that he has amnesia and cannot remember who he is nor anything about his past. He finds himself in a palatial villa with three woman, Mrs Friend (Norma Swinburne), Selina (Carol Matthews) and Marnie (Lisa Gastoni) who claim to be his mother, wife and sister. They tell him that he is the son of meat packing tycoon and poet Charles Renton-Friend who recently died and has left him his estate worth $2,000,000. In reality, the son was a drunk who ran away when his father died of a suspected heart attack. It transpires that the father left strict conditions in his will that must be met before his estate can be passed over to his son. Selina and her lover, Dr Normand, saw the opportunity to prey on Chance's amnesia and pass him off as the missing heir to trick the executors of the will and get the money for themselves. However, when the police suspect that the father was murdered - the ensuing autopsy reveals digitalis poisoning - Chance becomes their chief suspect since it is believed he is the son. With Marnie's help, Chance sets out to clear his name by finding the real Charles Renton-Friend Jnr...A second feature murder mystery drama with an ingenious plot, which is sadly rendered a complete dud by its completely lacklustre treatment both in direction and writing. Most of the action unravels on a single the set (the villa) so all the twists and turns of the plot are revealed in words by the actors in the manner of a dreary play with no dramatic flashbacks or action. The screenplay by J McClaren Ross, while undoubtedly having some good ideas, is far fetched and some of the plot's twists do not seem at all credible. The cast do what they can to salvage it (former Tarzan star Lex Barker is confined to a wheelchair for most of the film), but that they fail is no fault of their own. Only Philip Grindrod's camera-work and Wilfred Arnold's set design emerges with any credit with the villa giving the proceedings an elegant, exotic feel and, it must be said, more than what was necessary for a run of the mill picture like this. Director Montgomery Tully, a real stalwart of featurettes, co-features and b-pics throughout the fifties and sixties, did some impressive work with such films as the William Hartnell thriller Murder In Reverse (1945) and the excellent The Third Alibi (1960), but he could do nothing to lift this from poor to even average. Don't be fooled by the film's alternative title, Female Fiends, it is nowhere near as exciting.

The idea behind "Female Fiends" is pretty good, but unfortunately it's not nearly as good as it could be because of poor writing. Good idea--poorly written. That's pretty much the film.Lex Barker plays a man who awakens to find he has no idea who he is. He's told that he's the rich heir to an estate and his memory lapse and injuries (he's in a cast) are the result of an accident. However, it's pretty obvious to the viewer that this is not true. But why?! Why would a bunch of people suddenly try to convince a guy he's a member of their family?! After a bit, Barker is suspicious and begins to dig. It's a nice idea--but it resolved almost immediately after Barker begins to dig!! The film is 68 minutes long and should have been at least 80 minutes. It seems quick--rushed even. And, as a result, it's only a time-passer and no more. Sad...as the idea was pretty good. Unfortunately, the film just doesn't do much with the idea.

Strange Awakening (1958)First off: this is a bad B-movie with some fun quirks. That will thrill a few of you and chase the rest away. Good!The plot, as improbable as it is, has some curious elements, the main one being, what would you do if you woke up and remembered nothing? And started to suspect that the people around you were creating a false history for you? And a few cracks in their story started to show? And you had two or even three attractive women loitering about? And there was a lot of money attached to it all? And your life was in danger?Well, this movie comes at the nadir of Hollywood and British movie-making, and it's a horribly contrived formula movie that pales next to Twilight Zone and other B-movie dramas with psychological twists. Even the main character's last names are pushy: Friend and Chance, not to mention the burly Swede name Sven. The opening sequence where our hero picks up a hitchhiker and then gets whacked in the head by him is irrelevant, except for the whack. And the amnesia. Then the hospital scene, the mother (so-called) at bedside, and the realization that all is not right. But hey, there are those pretty girls, and one of them is bound to sympathize with you and fall into your arms, right?And it's only an hour long. You might think of it as just an old t.v. episode where your expectations are different. It bustles along with mediocre acting, reasonable filming, crack editing, and some cool and brief montage effects (including an airplane propellor merging into a tabletop fan). And the original title, Female Fiends, is pretty good, though there are Male Fiends on hand, too (remember Sven).Director Monty Tully isn't about to have a boxed set of his work, but it's great fun just to read the titles of all the movies he made this same singular year, 1958: The Diplomatic Corpse, The Electronic Monster, Female Fiends, Print of Death, Crime of Honour, The Crossroad Gallows, The Long Knife, Man with a Gun, and I Only Arsked! What a year.Strange Awakening, here before you, isn't all bad!But mostly. Enjoy it in proportion.

I saw this movie when it first came out and I was still a boy. As the IMDb has no information about the movie's plot or quality, I am appending a few thoughts although I remember very little about this film.A man (Lex Barker) is driving a glamorous car in the south of France, and gives a lift to a stranger. When the stranger gets out, he does not close the car door and so the driver has to lean over to pull the door shut himself. As he does so, the hitchhiker clubs him with a cosh (or some such implement).The man wakes up in a luxurious bed within a luxurious bedroom. A very good-looking girl (Lisa Gastoni) walks in and kisses him. He responds as any red-blooded man would but the girl pulls away, saying "That's no way to kiss your sister!" (or words to that effect). The man realises that he has lost his memory. He soon finds that he has an equally good-looking wife (Carole Matthews) and is the son of a rich man.Although fifty years later I recall these scenes clearly, they are the only scenes I do remember about this movie, so "The Strange Awakening" is both memorable and forgettable! (I apologise for the inadequacy of this review. If any other IMDb contributor submits a fuller appreciation, I will of course withdraw mine.)