Taste of Fear (1961) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Tony the Terror ★★★★½ 10

  Wow! Definitely one of the best Hammer horror films I've seen and I had never even heard of it! When you watch as many movies as those of us here in the LB community do, you start to get a pretty good idea of how a movie is going to be before you watch it so it's nice when something just comes out of nowhere and slaps you right in the face by being so damn good!

  Some scenes in this were legit terrifying. When she sees her dead father sitting in the dark I was actually kinda scared? I wasn't expecting that at all! And a lesbian love story sub-plot? And an extended scene of a guy in a…

• Review by laird ★★★★

  Mommy, Where's Daddy?"

  I have no idea what a "summer house" is, but if they're normally filled with spooky taxidermy and dolls, I think I want one?

• Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★

  Gorgeously shot b&w Hammer riff on Hitchcock with a good sense of paranoia and hysteria as it develops its various murder plots and double-crosses hidden beneath the idyllic domestic surfaces. Takes a bit to really get going but once it does its gothic dressing (lots of candles and wood and corpses in the attic) and macabre mood carry it just nicely to its insanely shocking final beat meant to mirror the beauty-disturbed-by-violence opening that I'm not sure makes total sense but got me nonetheless.

• Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon ★★★★★ 13

  1st Seth Holt (followed by Danger Route, The Nanny and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb)

  Hello all! I sat down with the lovely Amy Hensarling* recently to discuss two Hidden Gems of Hammer. This is the second of our films we're discussing (the first being Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, which was reviewed earlier this month) and as you can tell, I managed to convert someone to this film's absolutely masterful quality. Thank you, Amy, for a wonderful time!

  Check it out here!

  *Find her here!

  Seth Holt in Order:

  1. Taste of Fear
  2. Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
  3. The Nanny
  4. Danger Route

• Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 19

  Vague spoilers ahead, starting in the third paragraph.

  This is a quite conventional story about gaslighting for an inheritance (isn't it always an inheritance?), until suddenly it's not, and we find ourselves drowning in a sordid sea of sex and shamelessness, a development which reveals Taste of Fear to be much closer to the world of the giallo than almost anything else made in 1961.* It's not that the film trades in lurid violence that makes it feel like a giallo (it doesn't), but rather the twists and turns of its final act, twists which serve not only to surprise the viewer but, crucially, make things just that little bit nastier. Here, as in many of the most entertaining gialli,…

• Review by Slig001 ★★★★½ 1

  A superbly well constructed thriller from Hammer Studios. Taste of Fear begins with a body dragged from a river. From there we shift focus to a wheelchair bound girl (played by the stunning Susan Strasberg) returning to her father's estate after ten years, only to discover he has apparently gone away. Director Seth Holt does an excellent job setting the situation, characters and narrative trajectory. The audience nicely lulled into false sense of security, with the film taking the shape of a common gaslighting style thriller as our heroine begins seeing her father's corpse around the estate. The film is beautifully dark and macabre. The lavish French estate complete with tenebrous swimming pool (a la Les Diaboliques) is captured in…

• Review by alanis ㅤ󠀠󠀠󠀠 ★★★★½ 2

  why are you doing all this for me?
  because you’re pretty. 𐙚 ₊˚⊹

  ౨ৎ omg this movie was amazing! it really reminded me of wait until dark (1967)& bunny lake is missing (1965), films i watched this year and absolutely adored ♡

  the atmosphere of this film was just perfect! every scene was so entertaining and well made that i never felt bored or distracted. and oh my, the last twenty minutes were wild! — i seriously wasn’t expecting that plot twist at all!

  and i’m totally in love with susan strasberg! she’s just so beautiful ♡

• Review by oldsoulkaty 🎅🏻🎄 ★★★★★ 8

  the amount of plot twists in this was INSANE. i’m shook.

  this was truly a masterpiece. absolutely brilliant. the amount of depth to the story portrayed in this was so gripping. it had me on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen after every twist and turn that unfolded. it was terrifying and heartbreaking and just an all around shocker.

  the acting was incredible and the characters all had me engaged in the story throughout. they all got me good i swear! this was just genius! i swear my mouth was hanging open throughout most of the movie but especially at the end. i was dumbfounded at what had happened and been revealed.

  so, i highly recommend watching…

• Review by Graham 7

  A twisting, turning joyride of a suspense thriller with a few darker horror moments, Taste of Fear is a 60s special alright.

  Complete with some terrific performances from Susan Strasberg, Ronald Lewis, Ann Todd and the Hammer Horror man himself, Christopher Lee, the film sets off on a tale of stress induced visions, body-discovery and double cross. At around an hour in, it takes a sharp turn towards the darkness and all sorts of bad behaviours reveal themselves as we start to discover the lengths our ensemble will go to for love and money.

  Very entertaining, and if you like a good Hitchcock type suspense, this could well scratch your itch.

  ---
  The Podcast Macabre 2022
  41. A Hammer Films production

• Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★½

  You say my mind is affecting my legs. You're wrong. It's my legs that are affecting my mind.
  -Penny Appleby

  I had never heard of this film until I went searching for some Christopher Lee horror that I had never seen for October and it turned out to be one of the best Hammer films I've ever seen. A horror mystery with a very Hitchcockian feel to it.

  Leans much more towards mystery suspense then the Gothic horror I'm used to with the studio's output. You have Susan Strasberg as Penny Appleby, a wheelchair bound young woman that goes to live with her estranged father after the death of her mother leaves her alone. Not everything seems right though when…

• Review by WraithApe ★★★★ 2

  Twisty little thriller from the Hammer stable that takes its cues from Hitchcock with a splash of Clouzot's Les Diaboliques. It's something of a departure from more typical Hammer fare, but still offers a familiar face in Christopher Lee, putting on his, ahem, best French accent as the sinister Dr. Pierre Gerrard.

  The performances are beguiling and the plot sinuous enough to keep you rapt, but atmosphere is king here. Clifton Parker's moody score is complimented by the incessant chirping of crickets on the night air, while the black and white photography makes exquisite use of light and shadow. Two scenes that stand out as particularly memorable and creepy: an ominously banging shutter leading to a grim discovery in the summer house and Robert's nocturnal dip, which has an almost surreal vibe to it - a ghastly spectre amongst the weeds at the bottom of an improbably deep patio pool. A taste of fear indeed!

• Review by Joshua Dysart ★★★★

  The ending is a riot, I mean, it’s a lot of fun getting there, but this thing turns it up to 11 in the last twenty minutes or so.

  Sonically, the movie is very subdued in the first half. Birdsong. Crickets. The diegetic sounds of the airport. Ocean waves on rocks. The low metallic scraping of Penny’s wheelchair - particularly after its been in the pool - as she creeps around the house at night.

  And the movie escalates really well, slowly cranking up the bombast. Every character is acting out the most naive, forthright, simplest, anodyne version of themselves. All the players are playing for one another in the beginning. No one is being sincere. Everyone is acting. But…