MovieChat Forums > Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1961) Discussion > 'Real life monster'? (spoilers)

'Real life monster'? (spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by zharth
8 replies | jump to latest

A man who starts out as a fairly innocuous pervert inexplicably transforms into a killer in his elderly years. A man who is old and feeble and mute - in a fashion that I registered as more comical than sinister - is able to chase down two healthy young girls through the woods, and overpower one of them to the point of somehow killing her (but why? - maybe because he was demented, but surely not because he was sexually attracted to her). Don't be fooled, the villain in this film is every bit as fictitious as the vampires and mummies and werewolves in other Hammer Films.

Good film, but it suffers from the inconsistent characterization of its villain. He'd have been a lot more believable if they played up the "mentally unsound" aspect to his character instead of the sensational aspect of his pedophilia (even if pedophilia is a mental illness, there is no evidence to suggest it has any correlation with homicidal impulses). It's amazing this film was made all the way back in 1960, because it really is ahead of its time. It would fit in perfectly today with our modern hysteria surrounding sex offenders and the fear of sex as violence.

[–] DavidW1947 11 years ago

I think that the idea back in 1960 was that a man couldn't be sexually attracted to a child without wanting to kill them. A very inaccurate belief, especially regarding the old man in this film. After all, if he was that homicidal, he could have murdered them...or one of them...when they were dancing naked for him in his house.

In reality, especially in today's paranoia led society, a child lover (which is what the Greek word paedophile means in English) is no more likely to murder a child they are attracted to than anyone attracted to an adult would. Yes, there have been cases where a child has been used sexually and then murdered by the assailant, but I strongly suspect that in such a case, such a person is more likely to be a homicidal maniac who wants the absolute power of life and death over a child than an actual child lover.

[–] Writ_in_Water 10 years ago

Yes, but don't forget that he'd just been dragged to court on the allegations of these two children. He didn't look too happy up there in the dock, and there's a shot of him staring malevolently at the little girl when she testifies against him. When he comes across these same two children again, when they're in a vulnerable position...well, it doesn't stretch credibility too much, imo.

What I do find incredible is that the girls' parents would let them wander about by themselves right after the (possibly vengeful) pedophile was acquitted and freed. They didn't seem to be thinking about their children at all. A different era, maybe, but still...

[–] DavidW1947 10 years ago

Well, I will certainly say things were very different when I was a youngster in the 1950s and my parents giving me so much freedom to roam would be looked on today as very odd and uncaring. There was no paranoia about paedophilia in those days and I doubt that anyone had even heard of the word back then or knew what it meant. In the summertime, I used to go out early in the morning and wander far from home and not go back until it was time for tea. I remember when I was seven years old, I met a man in the park and he pushed me on the swings and I rode in his lap down the slide with him holding me. Today’s parents would be horrified if a stranger went anywhere near their children in a park, or even if they saw one taking a photograph in the park.

I started going to the cinema on my own aged 10 in 1957, catching the bus into town in the early evening and catching the last bus home at 10:30 pm. Sometimes, if the film finished too late and I’d missed the last bus, I’d walk the two miles home and at no time did I feel that I was in any danger from anyone. It’s true that I was touched up a couple of times by men who had taken me in to see an “A” certificate film (children not allowed in unless accompanied by an adult), but nobody wanted to do that to me while I was walking home on my own. I certainly wouldn’t have been afraid of someone like the senile old man in this film, because at that age, I could run a lot faster than he could shuffle along. In any case, I would have considered it a waste of energy running from him, as he obviously hadn’t got the strength to crush a grape. This is why I find it so unbelievable that the two girls were so terrified of him. It seems to me that Hammer here were portraying him as a supernatural boogeyman rather than as a real person.

[–] Writ_in_Water 10 years ago

My dad grew up in New York City in the 1940's and his experience was a lot like yours: long before he was 10 years old he was allowed to wander the city on his own by way of the subway, visiting parks, movie theaters, etc. (He also says that if you came in 10 minutes late for a movie you could get in free, then stay and watch the film as many times as you liked!) It wasn't unusual, even after dark, to see small kids from all neighborhoods wandering the streets on their own. When I was growing up in the 1970's in a large Maryland suburb, things hadn't changed much from that: by the time I was eight or nine I was taking the bus by myself and staying out all day. (When I was four I walked a half mile to kindergarten by myself every day through fields and woods). The only time I felt menaced by a stranger was once when I was walking by a lake and a middle-aged guy began following me, going on about my blue eyes, but I quickly got away from him. (He seemed almost as sad and pathetic to me as the old guy in the movie).

Things changed a bit around 1975, when two local girls (the Lyon sisters) disappeared while walking home from a mall. Suddenly our teachers were giving us lessons in self-defense (!), showing us scary filmstrips, giving our folks "block parent" signs to hang in the window, etc. But even then it was mostly girls who were curfewed, chaperoned, and sternly cautioned. Today, of course, everything's different. (My sister won't let her preteen children play in the backyard without an adult present). I'm not convinced that (statistically) the world is so much more dangerous now than it was then. And the loss of freedom and the implicit scariness of all this supervision must take a psychic toll on children. That said, given the unique circumstances of this movie, I was surprised that the parents didn't keep a closer watch over the kids...espec after what happened the last time they rode out alone in the Crazy Old Man neck of the woods. :-D

[–] essex9999 10 years ago

I grew up in the 60's, also in the Maryland suburbs, and we had the freedoms you mention up to a point. Remember, though, that most middle-class mothers didn't work in those days. There was someone at home who expected to know roughly where her children were, expected them to come home after school or call and generally exercised an indirect control that probably made parents feel less anxious than they do today, when there is more geographic separation. Also, because mothers were home in the daytime, suburban neighborhoods were busy places, not as quiet and deserted as some are now with both parents at work and children in school or daycare.

Even so, we were also warned about (yes, really) not taking candy from strangers, not getting in strangers' cars, not believing strangers who told us that our parents had sent them for us and things of that sort.

The level of fear was lower key, perhaps because, without the internet and 24-hour news channels, there was simply less publicity. However, the awareness of danger was there, and children were warned to be careful.

[–] DavidW1947 10 years ago

It was different for me in the early 1950s (in England). Yes, my dad went out to work and my mum stayed home to run the house and look after us children. I was never told not to talk to strangers and indeed, in those days, I mixed freely with strangers and regarded any man who talked nice to me as a friend. I was the kind of little boy who would quite happily and willingly go off with anyone who showed me any kindness or affection. In those days parents just didn't think that some men were sexually attracted to children, so it was not a problem for them. These days, thanks to an hysterical media out to shock the populace in order to sell more papers, the public has been convinced over the past thirty years that all men are out to harm all children, which, of course, is total nonsense. But, as Orson Welles proved with his 'The War of the Worlds' radio broadcast that caused nationwide panic in America, the public, generally speaking, are very gullible and easily lead and will believe any lie as long as it's big enough. These days, of course, it is a criminal offence in the UK for any man to talk to a child in the street unless he is a relative of the child and could be arrested for the strangely titled 'crime' of grooming, which is something you once did to horses. The result has been a paranoid population where children and adults are not allowed to mix or speak to each other and mentoring and role models have been thrown out of the window. It would be funny it it weren't so tragic.

[–] sleepingtiger (712) 7 years ago

Because pedophiles exist---they existed in your time, like you said, and people are simply more open about it today. People back in your time just didn't want to admit how prevalent they were, and probably only talked about it behind closed doors,that's all.

[–] MaxDemian (64) a year ago

Perhaps the children are killed in order to "conceal the consequences of an irregular union" as the Revd. Malthus said in a slightly different context. (He of population control fame.) And is it not sometimes called a "fate worse than death"? (Oh dear, I seem to be justifying child murder.)