Experiment in Terror

After seven lightish comedies and dramas, and directly following Breakfast at Tiffany's, Edwards launched himself in a new direction with this thriller: an experiment for him (although he had trodden thick-ear territory with his TV series, such as the legendary Peter Gunn) and also for the genre. Years before John Carpenter and other movie brats began to play with audience expectations and memories, Edwards constructed his film - about an asthmatic psycho pursuing Lee Remick - around precisely similar attitudes. Gone was the whodunit mystery formula; gone the need for psychological explanations; in their place, an exercise in steely style, with the audience split between its concern for the victim and its fascination with the psycho's activities. After Carpenter and De Palma, it may seem a little dated; yet Edwards' classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.