During the first half of the 1960’s, the UK’s Hammer Films released a series of well-crafted, entertaining, over-the-top psychological thrillers, especially Paranoiac (1963) and Nightmare (1964). Slightly less Gothic in mood was Seth Holt’s Taste of Fear (US: Scream of Fear), which stars Susan Strasberg as Penny Appleby, a young, wheelchair-bound heiress who, disturbed by her best friend’s suicide, returns home to her estranged father’s French Riviera estate after ten years away. Upon meeting her stepmother Jane (Ann Todd) for the first time, Penny is informed that her father’s been called away on business, but later that night Penny sees a man she believes is her father alone in the guesthouse, as still as a corpse. After another sighting and more strange occurrences, Jane and family doctor Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) try to convince Penny that she’s suffering a neurotic condition called “hysterical paralysis” but Penny, with the assistance of handsome chauffeur Robert (Ronald Lewis), sets out to unearth the truth about the cryptic household. From the opening scene on an Alpine Lake in which locals speak German (without subtitles), Holt maintains tension and disorientation throughout the film, each scene introducing new uncertainties that merely build toward another trademark Hammer plot twist. Several very suspenseful scenes offer chills akin to the horror genre, particularly as the investigative Penny wheels herself through the estate in the middle of the night, and Clifton Parker’s orchestral score adds to the creepiness with disturbed woodwinds and dramatic strings.