Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Overrated and overhyped

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This Hammer film is set in Canada and it's always interesting to hear British players sound like they're from across the pond. Gwen Watford and Patrick Carter have come across so Carter can take a job as the new high school principal. One fine day the parents are startled to hear their daughter tell that she and a friend met a kindly old stranger who had them take off their clothes and dance in the nude.When they go to the authorities they've got quite a surprise from them in that they know who it is and are reluctant to take action. It's as if Ben Cartwright in his dotage was given to this behavior. Felix Aylmer who plays such classic good guys as Isaac Of York in Ivanhoe and Merlin in Knights Of The Round Table is our old pervert. Aylmer who possessed one of the most majestic speaking voices in British cinema is silent here.Eventually they get their day in Canadian court, but Aylmer and his family have juice. That only sets things up for the shocking climax.This Hammer film doesn't have the blood and gore associated with the name. It also doesn't really move until the climax. It was rather unnerving to see Felix Aylmer in such a role. It's a sub par film and a sub par Felix Aylmer.

I knew that this movie concerns a child molester, so I wasn't sure how that would turn out as the plot of a thriller. My opinion after watching it is that Hammer treated the subject in the right way, but that making the film probably wasn't a good idea.The story is simple...two 9yr old girls go to an old man's house on the promise of some candy, and are assaulted (well they are not hurt but it amounts to an assault). This event opens the story, and the rest of the movie charts the attempts of the parents of one child to have their story believed. What's interesting is that the main angle - which is that the molester is part of the most influential family in town, and nobody dares to challenge them - could very easily happen today. Sure the film looks dated now, especially the idea of making the molester himself into an almost imbecilic goon when it's very easy for child molesters to pass unnoticed among society, but it's still unnerving enough to have impact.Because the subject matter is unpleasant, it kind of makes watching the film hard to enjoy. There isn't a lot of plot but the acting is all very good, especially the family and their daughter, who do seem to react very realistically to the situation...although it's very obvious that all the cast are British and can barely pull of what are supposed to be Canadian accents. I'm glad to have seen this odd little film, but I can see why the topic doesn't come up very often - there's probably no easy way to make entertainment out of it.

Just as there is no difference between bad and good fudge, as some people might say, there is also no difference between good power and bad power. You see, power is the problem, period.This may be difficult for some people to understand, especially to those who pray to a good power as if there was such a thing. What makes such confusion possible is probably, more than anything else, the deterioration that the word "power" has undergone since the days of the old Greeks, as seen in Platon's dialogues, in which power was clearly and only what we now call "might" or "abuse of power" and not such things as "knowledge", "strength" and "ability", which may all be used for good as well as for evil purposes. For the old Greeks as well as for all of us when we are affected (and not carelessly affect!), power meant the possibility, lent by society, to rule over other person's lives, more or less gratuitously (depending on what kind of society). In short one might also say that "he or she, who cannot abuse power without punishment, simply have no power to begin with".In this film, a man of power is a pedophile and can allow himself much more than if he was a black man in the South, for instance. This is shown very clearly in this film, which makes this film rare, since it is an attack on power.In the fifties, in which this story takes place, there were many opportunities to work and less opportunities to control the working-force, which is probably why people still dared to speak up against power. This kind of film has become very rare these days. The film industry seems to have sold out to brainless entertainment or artsy-fartsy "literature" - it's safer that way, so most artists and journalists seem to argue.

This will gather "unhelpful" votes from fans, but oh, well... Hammer was great with sumptuously lush Gothic monster stories, but messages were never their strong suite. Their clichéd Victorian patriarchs were always tormenting sanitized younger generation, and that was bad enough, but "serious" picture Never takes sweets from a stranger is worse. Film was described by producer Anthony Hinds as a movie about dangers of psychopaths roaming free, so who is this pedophiliac murderer in question? Oh yes, elderly mental patient, a real menace to society. Rolleyes. This makes film's "message" downright squalid, because in real life pedophiliacs are usually not dotty old men or outsiders of society, but doctors, priests etc. Just like in real life calculating pervert Hannibal Lecter would have been sent to death chamber instead of psychiatric facility. Thank atheism this film was commercial and critical flop and Hammer returned to what they did so splendidly - entertainment. Halleluja.