Coming to Blu-ray on February 13th from Arrow Video
A man whose family died in a shot down plane becomes a criminal, escapes, and joins others in an effort to find and punish those responsible.
Written by Alistair MacLean and Robert Carrington, and directed by Michael Tuchner, Fear is the Key is an action-drama that seems to keep most of the car action (which it is often sold based on that) through the first part, then becomes more talk-y with less balance to things. Which is the main issue with this film, balance. While the car chase sequence at the start is fantastic, showing how an exciting car chase can be done on screen. It’s one of the best out there. Then, our lead and his hostage meet a third party and the interest dwindles at an incredibly high rate. The film loses all attention as it nears its conclusion, to the point that it had to be rewinded to get back and rewatch the last third. This is where the film lacking balance is very clear. It also seems to lose direction as things advance in the story, making it seem like two filmmakers worked on separate parts of the film and then Frankenstein’ed it all together. While the film isn’t entirely bad as a result, it loses the interest of its viewers and becomes too long for its own good.
The cast here is led by Barry Newman who gives a solid performance. Suzy Kendall joins him and does great at first, but eventually, she kind of seems to lose interest in the story along with the viewer. Something is missing in her performance. The same can be said for most of the performances in the film. A few of the actors even look bored as they go through their paces. Of course, this movie being over 50 years old, some of the sensibilities of the time are to be accounted for, but as someone who watches a ton of movies from the 1960s and 1970s, there is something missing in most of the performances here.
The cinematography here looks great with work by Alex Thomson showing off the scenery and that car chase. The work on that sequence is really solid and clearly influenced how other films have shot theirs since. The editing by Ray Lovejoy assists this work quite well and makes it all become more dynamic without keeping the viewer from seeing all the action.
Overall, Fear is the Key is an uneven film with a great first third that really gets the viewer into the story and then it gets slow, leading to a loss of interest. The film isn’t bad at all, it’s just uneven. The film is a bit dated, but it’s not bad.
Now, onto this re-release… The transfer here is impeccable, looking and sounding great, showing how shot-on-film movies can and should look like this many years later. The release here has a bunch of special features with the usual for Arrow Video of new artwork for one side of the reversible cover, a new illustrated collector’s booklet, and a double-sided poster with the new art and classic art of the film. Of course, the trailers are here as they often are on just about any release. What makes this release worth picking up, the best of the bunch in terms of features are the archival interview with Gavrik Losey called Producing action and the archival featurette with crew members called Bayou to Bray which is a look at the production from these members’ viewpoint.