STOP ME BEFORE I KILL! (1960)

On his honeymoon, British race car driver Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis) gets into a accident; his wife Denise (Diane Cilento) is injured, the other driver dies, and Alan gets a concussion and is forced to spend months recuperating. When they eventually take their delayed honeymoon in the South of France, Alan is still moody and tentative, and when he and Denise start making out, he is compelled to try to strangle her. This, of course, is quite a problem on a honeymoon. At a party held by eminent psychiatrist Dr. Prade (Claude Dauphin), Alan is quite obnoxious (Prade humorously calls him "unconventionally rude") and Alan eventually punches Prade in the face when it is suggested that he might have still have emotional problems related to the accident. Back in London, after another strangulation attempt, Denise gets Alan to see Dr. Prade professionally. Prade, suspecting that Alan's unclear memories of the auto accident are causing his problems, gets him to relive the crash and in theory, begin to recover, but the next morning, Denise is missing from their apartment and evidence points to her having been murdered—by Alan. The film bogs down a bit in the middle, then takes a couple of nifty twists in its last 20 minutes that I won't spoil—even if the main one is a bit predictable—and the conclusion is satisfying, despite some remaining plot holes. Overall, a watchable thriller with two good central performances by Lewis and Dauphin, and a weak one from Cilento, whose French accent is irritatingly overdone. Lewis's character is almost always rude and unlikeable, mostly due to the crash and its aftermath, which occasionally makes it difficult to be sympathetic to him, but the actor (pictured at right) gives a committed performance nonetheless. Dauphin's character has the patience of Job as he tries to help Alan, and Francoise Rosay has a small but interesting role as the psychiatrist's mother. A Hammer film but suspense, not horror. Aka, THE FULL TREATMENT. [DVD]