Fragment of Fear

Fragment of Fear is a 1970 British thriller film directed by Richard C. Sarafian and starring David Hemmings, Gayle Hunnicutt, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Roland Culver, Flora Robson and Arthur Lowe. It was adapted from the 1965 novel A Fragment of Fear by John Bingham.

Plot
Tim Brett is visiting his rich but estranged aunt in an Italian coastal hotel catering mainly for old ladies.

On a tour of Pompeii visitors find the body of his aunt, who has been strangled. An elaborate funeral follows. At the funeral Tim has a conversation with Signor Bardoni, the hotel owner, who organised the funeral. He says it is ironic that his aunt has been killed by a criminal when she had spent her life "helping criminals". A card on a wreath at the funeral says it is from "The Stepping Stones".

Brett is a former drug addict who has written a book about his experience and has been published. He has been clean for about a year. He had recently become acquainted with his aunt, a philanthropist who expressed interest in helping some of Tim's former acquaintances. She is found murdered soon after. Tim starts a relationship with Juliet, the woman who found his aunt's body, and they are soon engaged.

Dissatisfied with the progress that the police are making in his aunt's murder case, he begins to ask questions of some of his aunt's acquaintances. He then begins to receive warnings from unknown persons to stop his inquiries. On the train he meets an elderly woman. She hands him a note of supposed comfort, asking him to read it at home. The note turns out to be a warning about leaving matters to the police, apparently typed on his own typewriter. There's also an ominous laugh recorded on Tim's own tape recorder, indicating that someone has been in his apartment.

Tim is then visited by a police sergeant, Sgt. Matthews, who informs him that the woman on the train had lodged a complaint against Tim. Sgt. Matthews takes Tim's information but after the woman is also killed, Tim finds out that there is no sergeant by that name working at the police station. Tim is later assaulted on the streets at night by two men who leave him lying on the ground with a hypodermic needle. Tim throws the needle away down a gutter. He makes contact with a secret government agency which tells him that they are after the people who are threatening him, but all is, again, not what it seems to be. As the situation continues, Tim and Juliet's wedding fast approaches.

Production
The film was made at Shepperton Studios. Location shooting took place around London, Seaford in Sussex and around Pompeii and Sorrento in Italy. The film's sets were designed by the art director Ray Simm. Costumes were by Phyllis Dalton.

Music
The jazz score composed by Johnny Harris was later used by Levi's to soundtrack their European Kung Fu TV advertising campaign in the late 1990s. The original soundtrack features Harold McNair on solo flute.

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "For much of its length, Fragment of Fear works quite well as a standard whodunnit.... David Hemmings, though indecisively Methody, still gives one of his most detailed performances so far; and the mood is contrived and controlled well enough to keep one engrossed. ... And then the detective story becomes an espionage thriller, the temperature drops, interest dies, and just after an attempt to revive it with the extraordinary wedding sequence the film quite suddenly ends: a train goes into a tunnel and never comes out again ... when a final shot startles one into blank bewilderment, one's initial reaction is that one has been hoodwinked, that the whole film is a shameful cheat."