Deadly Strangers – 1974 | 88 mins | Drama, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Clichéd psycho-killer road movie told in part in flashback. Sidney Hayers mechanical thriller starts off on a promising footing but the story soon becomes bogged down as the middle stages of the film only serve to pass the time until the inevitable suspenseful finale; which despite being unsurprising is well handled and gripping.

An unidentified patient has escaped from Greenwood mental institution in the Midlands and the police are undertaking a manhunt to capture the fugitive psychopath. On the same rain swept day strangers Stephen Slade (Simon Ward), a supposed travelling salesman, and Belle Adams (Hayley Mills), an attractive girl on a nostalgia trip to her childhood Wycombe home, are thrown together when Belle narrowly escapes a molesting lorry driver and Stephen picks her up on the side of the road. Both have dark and a traumatic history, Belle lost her parents in a road accident and was sent to live with a lecherous uncle, while Stephen has a sexual hang-up due to his lovemaking inadequacies.

After knocking a Hells Angel from his bike the pair sidesteps any police road block but is the road accident and Ward’s drinking the real reason for them avoiding the police? The pair briefly become separated when Belle accepts a lift into Wycombe with eccentric American Malcolm Robarts (Sterling Hayden), but after reuniting on the sea front, Stephen and Belle settle down for an apprehensive evening at a nearby hunting lodge Meanwhile, the police still doggedly attempt to detain the psychotic escapee.