The Collector

Freddie Clegg, who collects butterflies, wins a pool and buys an isolated farmhouse. Then he abducts Miranda Grey, an art student he has watched from a distance for a long time, and locks her in the cellar. He tells her he does not want to hurt her and is only waiting for her to know him. She tries to escape, fails, catches pneumonia and dies. The film ends with Clegg beginning to watch another woman. William Wyler directed. Terence Stamp plays Clegg and Samantha Eggar plays Miranda. The source is John Fowles's 1963 novel. Wyler turned down The Sound of Music to make this. On set he told Stamp to give Eggar the cold shoulder to sharpen her performance, and Eggar lost fourteen pounds during filming. Both leads won acting prizes at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, the first time two performers from the same film had done so. Eggar won a Golden Globe and was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. Wyler's nomination was the twelfth and last of his career. The reviews were mixed; some praised the suspense and atmosphere, others found it emotionally hollow. Fowles insisted on writing the screenplay himself for the next adaptation, The Magus, which is generally attributed to his disappointment with this one. Who it is for: viewers who like psychological thrillers confined to one place and Stamp's cold performance. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by abduction narratives. Almost all of it happens in a locked cellar.