Dream No Evil (1970)

Dream No Evil: Directed by John Hayes. With Edmond O’Brien, Brooke Mills, Marc Lawrence, Michael Pataki. A young orphan girl obsessed with finding her father gets adopted by a traveling church. She grows up and gets engaged, but her obsession with locating her father is about to turn deadly.

“This is really about the performance from Cosmo Jarvis (u0026quot;Peteu0026quot;) – a house painter who appears to have a bit of a crush on a much younger girl u0026quot;Laurieu0026quot; (Lauren Coe). He sees her with her mother, watches her at athletics training and generally leaves us with an horrendously ominous feeling that something nasty is looming. When she, constantly teased by her school-mates, starts to engage in conversation with him – and then she accepts a lift – alarms bells really start to ring… Actually, it is pretty obvious from early on what is really going on, and the story becomes way less relevant to the audience than the characterisations and relationship between the two – and Jarvis stands out as the none too sharp decorator. There is some pith in the script – especially from Coe – and the story moves along well enough in a very wet English coastal town when the two share the screen. Itu0026#39;s a good, if not a great, story that is certainly worth a watch – but perhaps itu0026#39;s just one for the telly in due course.”