Battery_Park The film, looks, sounds, 'feels' exactly typical of its period. The colour, camera angles, use of music, are similar to other films, particularly The Strange Affair, All neat in black stockings, Fright and, as biggee writes, in another review, the brilliant, almost forgotten, I start counting.Similarly the portrayal of young girls as provocative 'sex objects' without any hint of embarrassment, discernment or question, and that's not a criticism, that's what life was like - at least certainly at my school.Reasonable acting, I do like the period fashions and behaviours and cars and would watch it just for that. There are plenty of red herrings but, slight spoiler coming, if you look with care when Suzy Kendall sees the murderer in her car's rear view mirror - you only get a split second glimpse, you can see who the murderer is.

The_Void Assault is apparently a British attempt at emulating the popular Italian Giallo sub-genre. If that is indeed what the filmmakers were aiming for, it has to be said that they've done a rather good job, as Assault incorporates many of the common Giallo trademarks. We've got a killer on the loose, a number of victims, a police investigation, an eyewitness, lots of red herrings and an unknown assailant, among other things. I'd even go as far as to say that if I didn't know better, I might have thought this was an Italian production, set in the UK. It's unfortunate, then, that director Sidney Hayers wasn't able to take the script and craft an exciting mystery out of it, as the film features far too much talking and not enough action, leaving it caught up in boredom for most of the running time. The plot follows the murder of a young girl in the woods outside of her school. When another is found dead in the same way shortly after, the police are brought in. Their only witness is a young teacher, who says the killer looks like the devil and puts herself on the line to catch the psychopath.One common element of the Italian Giallo is a silly plot, and that has been copied for this film also. The idea regarding the capture of the killer is preposterous, and the murderer would have to be a complete and utter fool to fall for it. The film doesn't seem too keen on keeping itself away from complete farce either, as the climax is very silly and it's often hard to keep a straight face while watching the film unfold, and that's not what you want from a thriller that handles themes of murder and rape. The cast is distinctly British, and Derbyshire-born Giallo star Suzy Kendall, who has also worked with the likes of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino and Umberto Lenzi on Giallo thrillers, takes the lead role and is joined by a host of tea-drinking co-stars. Sidney Hayers' direction is a little turgid at times, although scenes such as the one in which we get an early glimpse of the murderer are well shot. The conclusion to the mystery is disappointing, as the identity of the killer just sort of comes out of nowhere. Overall, this film isn't all that good; but it may appeal to Giallo fans for the fact that it's a Giallo, but it's not Italian.

Lurkerbunny ... not to mention before political correctness too. This could never be made today because now we know rape is about power, not sex. But in this film, it's all about sex, sex, sex. It's the original schoolgirl fetish film, a precursor to those Japanese tentacle films, except without tentacles.If you've read the summary, you'd know some pervert is raping schoolgirls in the woods. And killing some too. Why one girl goes through the woods directly after the first rape I dunno. Anyway it's a big mystery, and every guy is a suspect. This film has a lot of alternate titles, mostly dealing with Satan because the schoolteacher who saw the perpetrator said he "looked like Satan". Lesley Anne-Down (or however you spell it) is the lovely and barely legal (17 at the time) first victim.Okay, you've read this far, you know there's a spoiler warning, you must really wanna know something. Like who did it. It was Anthony Ainley's character. Yup. The old Master himself is the evil rapist. Who's really surprised, huh? Now excuse me, I think I'll go hop a TARDIS back to 1971 and stand in the woods while wearing a schoolgirl outfit. Aww yeah.

lazarillo Although any number of Italian gialli ("Nude Si Muore", "What Have You Done to Solange?", etc.) were set in Britain and/or were UK co-productions, this film is somewhat unique in that it seems to be a completely British giallo. We're definitely in giallo territory here: There's a vicious rapist-murderer on the loose at a girl's school. There are two witnesses to the murder--one who can't quite remember what she saw (a familiar plot-line in the Italian films)and a previous rape victim who is too traumatized to speak. The lead is Suzy Kendall, who two years earlier had starred in Dario Argento's seminal giallo "The Bird with Crystal Plumage." It's definitely a very British film, however. The cinematography is staid and workman-like compared to the more garish and stylistic Italian films. The plot is fairly linear and logical, at least until the end when the murderer-rapist goes to laughably ridiculous lengths to stop a psychiatrist from giving sodium pentathlon to the traumatized victim to help her recover her memory.It's not surprising given the famed British aversion to violence (in movies that is)that most of the violence here takes place off-screen. Still it is pretty nasty violence, especially considering the rape angle and the age and gender of the victims. (It's interesting that these kinds of movies never take place at a MEN'S college or in an old age home). The sex and nudity is also pretty non-existent, but it doesn't exactly seem wholesome either the way they have cast sexy twenty year olds as fifteen year olds and dressed them in mini-skirts short enough to get any real schoolgirl expelled. The most lurid scene involves the headmistress's lecherous husband and a student librarian on a ladder. I don't know if it makes it more or less perverse that the "student" is played by Janet Lynn, a British sex star of the period (thus the obvious pseudonym)who had been featured the year before in Pete Walker's naked sex romp "Cool It, Carol". The only really recognizable star though, besides Suzy Kendall, is a young Leslie-Anne Down as the traumatized rape victim. (Despite what an earlier reviewer said, Jenny Agutter is NOT in this movie).Still if you can get around the leering British hypocrisy, the relative lack of sex and violence, and the fairly low-wattage of the star power, this is actually a pretty entertaining little film, and, if nothing else, an interesting one.