Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

jamesraeburn2003 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.

robert-temple-1 This film stars Lex Barker, who in 1949 became Tarzan in succession to Johnny Weissmuller and made a succession of Tarzan films. He was very tall, handsome, and impressive, and was in constant demand as a leading man in B films (he appeared in 81 films). He died at the age of only 54 of a heart attack in the street in Manhattan. He does very well in the lead role in this film, though the acting laurels go to Lisa Gastoni as 'Marny'. I have recently praised her as an underrated actress in my review of WRONG NUMBER (1959, see my review). Carole Mathews and Nora Swinburne do very well in their creepy roles also. As someone who likes amnesia films and tries to see all of them, I was disappointed that this one was so corny. Lex Barker lives between Nice and Cannes. He is attacked and knocked unconscious by a thief whom he picked up as a hitchhiker, and he suffers total amnesia. This is made worse by the fact that he has no identification on him as a result of the robbery. A doctor at the hospital says he knows who he is, and he takes him to a huge villa for private nursing. But this is all a scam, for Barker's amnesia is convenient in enabling the household of women there, together with the dishonest doctor, to persuade him that he is the head of their family. The motive is to pretend that he is that person in order to complete the process of inheriting a large amount of money and property. Then they would get rid of him. Barker slowly begins to realize that something is wrong, and the plot thickens. It is a pity that the film is not at all convincing, and is just a run of the mill low budget 'product' directed without a trace of inspiration by Montgomery Tully, who did a much better job the year before in directing THE HYPNOTIST (1957, see my review). In the 1950s, Tully was directing as many as ten films a year! No wonder they were not all good, as he had become a mere factory hand. He must have sleepwalked through THE STRANGE AWAKENING, without himself waking up. And I bet he had total amnesia for half the films he had made the year before. We can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing much about most of them.

MartinHafer 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.

secondtake 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.