Never Take Sweets from a Stranger

Cyril Frankel's 1960 Hammer film is where the studio stepped outside horror and made its bravest picture. Peter Carter, his wife Sally and their daughter Jean move to a small Canadian town where he has been hired as school principal. The idyll collapses when Jean is abused by an elderly man from the most powerful family in town, and the film moves to its real subject: how a community invalidates what a child says in order to protect its own power. The courtroom section shows the child's testimony being dismantled by legal procedure with uncomfortable patience. On release the film failed with both audiences and critics; the subject was considered unacceptable at the time, and Hammer's exploitation-flavoured title misled viewers. It was reassessed in retrospectives three decades later and is now regarded as one of the most honest social-problem films of its kind. Who it's for: viewers interested in social-problem cinema and in Hammer's output beyond its familiar face. Who it's not for: anyone who will find a film centred on child abuse, offering no consolation, hard to sit through.