Straight On Till Morning (1972) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Sean Baker 6

  Wanted to check this out because I've been catching up on Peter Collinson's filmography. (Very sad that he passed away so young. Only 44 years old. ) Also because of the film's place in Hammer history. Seems like Hammer was trying to find a new direction and used Hitchcock and Powell's Peeping Tom for inspiration. Overall, what I appreciate most is Tushingham's performance and a glimpse of London circa '71.

  Good extras -
  - Presented In Two Aspect Ratios – 1.66:1 And 1.85:1
  - The Morning After – An Interview With Author/Film Historian Kim Newman
  - Dream Lover: Inside STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
  - Audio Commentary With Actress Rita Tushingham And Author/Film Historian Jonathan Sothcott
  - Theatrical Trailer

  Watched the Scream Factory Blu-ray

• Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  Hammer Studios sought for a European flavour for their movies in the seventies, and they certainly achieved that with this film. Given the stylish photography and soundtrack in the opening, had the film been made in Italy, people would swear it was a Giallo! Straight on Till Morning is essentially an urban fairytale. A plain young girl leaves Liverpool for big city London in search of a 'prince" to sire the baby she craves. She thinks she's snared him in the form of platinum blonde Shane Briant, but sure enough....her prince charming turns out to be a psychopath. Rita Tushingham's performance in this is a real precursor to Sissy Spacek in Carrie. It's such a pathetic portrayal; positively skin crawling…

• Review by Helen_S ★★★★ 11

  From one depressing Hammer flick (Demons of the Mind) to another. A rare for Hammer modern day setting serial killer film that is much more psychologically disturbing than anything shown. I had a tear at the end as that haunting song played on. The performances by the 2 leads, Shane Briant and Rita Tushingham, are out of this world. At some points you don't know who is the nuttier haha. All the Peter Pan references are bloody odd too! This includes one of the worst, unintentionally funny film makeovers ever!

• Review by WLudwig ★★★

  After being highly impressed with 1971’s Fright, I decided to watch another horror film from director Peter Collinson. This one is a real oddity. Like Fright, it’s very well-made, as Collinson uses staccato, non-linear editing and voyeuristic camerawork to create an off-kilter atmosphere. The performances are also strong, and despite the slow-burn nature of the pacing, I was intrigued enough to see where the story would end up. However, the thing about a slow burn is, the slower the build, the stronger the payoff has to be. This has a truly chilling sequence in the last ten minutes, but it then ends extremely abruptly, with little in the way of resolution. That, combined with the rather straightforward and basic nature of the plot, puts this in the “interesting curio” section rather than a home run. Still worth watching for 70’s horror fans though.

• Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★ 2

  Socially awkward Rita Tushingham leaves her mom's apartment in Liverpool for London in order to meet a man and have a family and maybe get into the swing. However, she has no clue how to achieve her objectives in life since she's spent her days wiling away in her bedroom writing fairytales. Kind of like a bad fairytale, fate brings her to meet Peter, played by Shane Briant, a more or less wealthy Londoner with an XKE who also spends time in his flat with we don't know how many women, mostly older than him and who like to drink, who have pledged their love to him and then he murders them. The film plays with the tension that Tushingham…

• Review by Karl ★★★½

  If you're a fan of Last Night in Soho you must watch this thriller from Hammer Films. It clearly inspired Edgar Wright which he confirmed with a recent list on iTunes. Rita Tushingham stars as a character similar to her granddaughter in Last Nigh in Soho. She lives in a fairy tale world and goes to London looking for a man to impregnate her. Of course she meets a psychopath. Tushingham is an interesting actress. Her eyes are so expressive and unique. This also has some interesting editing that might annoy some but I dug it. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending.

• Review by Stephen M ★★★ 8

  An odd little feature from Hammer Films when the studio was struggling, shifting from their well-known Gothic horrors to more contemporary psychological thrillers, often with a homicidal maniac terrorizing a woman. This one interestingly has touches of both "kitchen sink" dramas and mod Carnaby Street swinging London. And, of course, a serial killer.

  Brenda (Rita Tushingham from A Taste of Honey) plays a plain lonely Liverpool girl who escapes her drab existence by imagining herself in fairy tale stories she's constructed about princesses, castles and "happily ever after". She leaves home, comes to London, winds up working in a mod clothing boutique and meets a pretty blonde man named Peter (Shane Briant) who lives in his own fairy tale world.…

• Review by cherryz ★★★½

  Even expecting to be wrecked it saddened me more. With its pretty tune to add to the mood. Peter & Wendy live in a fantasy. I hoped for a happy ever after, I know it's not like me.

  Wendy wants a baby and Peter wants.....well nothing pretty. Oooft and Wendy's makeover is the worst. That judge style wig, girl you busted.

  I was ruined as soon as Tinker wore his pretty bow. They should have renamed Tinker to Nana.

• Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  Much like The Damned, which I watched yesterday, Peter Collinson's Straight on Till Morning appears rather like a sore thumb in the canon of Hammer.

  Made in 1972, the British studio famed for its horror was clearly trying to do something different, to try and get away from the Dracula and Frankenstein films they had made their name and notoriety on. Productions like this and Fear in the Night were taking Hammer away from the adult fairytales of Gothic lore and into more contemporary, psychological waters, whilst productions such as Taste the Blood of Dracula and The Horror of Frankenstein were attempts to rejuvenate their approach to those traditional monsters. Unfortunately, these tentative steps led to commercial dead ends as…

• Review by Michael501 📺 ★★★

  1972 In Review - July
  #3
  
  A timid, withdrawn woman meets a man she believes is finally the love of her life, unaware that he is a vicious serial killer.

  Here we have a very interesting movie from Hammer that isn’t one of their normal horrors.
  Although Hammer's output from the 60s and 70s was dominated by splendid Gothic horrors, their filmography from that period also contained a number of lesser known psychological thrillers—titles that were no doubt produced to cash in on the success of films such as Hitchcock's Psycho and French chiller Les Diaboliques. One of the last such efforts to be produced by Hammer (before they turned their attention to making TV comedies into full-length features) was…

• Review by AnonymousAndy ★★½ 2

  Straight on Till Morning aka Sex in the City aka The Prince of Wails

  Ignorance is domestic bliss for a naive young woman who moves to the big city not so much to sow wild oats but to settle down, get married and have children. After ignoring various red flags, she finds herself the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water as she falls in love with an androgynous creep who uses his box-cutter for some rather terrible arts and crafts. When the honeymoon phase ends, can there be a morning after?

  As its suggestive title would, um, suggest, this late-period offering from Hammer is a psychosexual thriller that ironically contains very little sex and even fewer thrills. In…

• Review by ItsLV ★★★★★

  Hammer Horror goes high art via psychological fairy tale surrealism.