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It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The acting in this movie is really good.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is a surprisingly good film and effective thriller but someone should have advised writer/director Val Guest that it really was a little too long. Very simple to put right too, because it is clear there is just a little too much of the 'going crazy' scenes in the first half and maybe a little bit too drawn out and twisty an ending. Otherwise its great, I wasn't particularly one over by Ronald Lewis if effectively menacing at times, but Claude Dauphin is great and Diane Cilento marvellous in one of her finest roles. I enjoyed the premise and particularly the psychiatric scenes, bit surprised by the appearance of the CO2 canister, but overall very involving with plenty of changes in pace and scenery. Fifteen/twenty minutes snip and this would be far more successful. Shame.

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.

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 ****

"Stop Me Before I Kill" is a rather entertaining but often flawed film. And, if you can look past its flaws, it will probably be worth your time. The film starts with a race car driver getting in a terrible accident. Months later, he comes out of a coma and appears to be recovering quite nicely. However, he's obviously suffering psychological after-effects--he's on edge, moody and sullen. What's worse, he then tries to strangle his wife--on several occasions! With the help of a psychiatrist and some dubious analytic psychiatry, the man tries to work out why he's got this homicidal urge. But, there are some BIG twists...Despite an excellent ending that makes this all worth while, here are a few problems with the plot. First, although he has tried several times to kill his wife, she stays with him and doesn't contact the police. Duh! Then, you notice that the race car driver's wife goes from being Italian to being French--her accent and language are a bit malleable! Also, the real reason for all this homicidal behavior is too obvious--there are too many clues to this and the film doesn't give the viewer many other options to consider. Still, it works well enough despite all this, though it's hardly a classic.