Best movie of this year hands down!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Like Gordon or rather Peter says: "There was only one fiend after all." - and it's almost too late when he discovers the truth. In retrospect it feels like she's been setting this up from the very first moment she meets him and executes it with cold precision. Definitely a wonderful little thriller even with some satirical barbs against teetotalers.

This film stars Lex Barker, who in 1949 became Tarzan in succession to Johnny Weissmuller and made a succession of Tarzan films. He was very tall, handsome, and impressive, and was in constant demand as a leading man in B films (he appeared in 81 films). He died at the age of only 54 of a heart attack in the street in Manhattan. He does very well in the lead role in this film, though the acting laurels go to Lisa Gastoni as 'Marny'. I have recently praised her as an underrated actress in my review of WRONG NUMBER (1959, see my review). Carole Mathews and Nora Swinburne do very well in their creepy roles also. As someone who likes amnesia films and tries to see all of them, I was disappointed that this one was so corny. Lex Barker lives between Nice and Cannes. He is attacked and knocked unconscious by a thief whom he picked up as a hitchhiker, and he suffers total amnesia. This is made worse by the fact that he has no identification on him as a result of the robbery. A doctor at the hospital says he knows who he is, and he takes him to a huge villa for private nursing. But this is all a scam, for Barker's amnesia is convenient in enabling the household of women there, together with the dishonest doctor, to persuade him that he is the head of their family. The motive is to pretend that he is that person in order to complete the process of inheriting a large amount of money and property. Then they would get rid of him. Barker slowly begins to realize that something is wrong, and the plot thickens. It is a pity that the film is not at all convincing, and is just a run of the mill low budget 'product' directed without a trace of inspiration by Montgomery Tully, who did a much better job the year before in directing THE HYPNOTIST (1957, see my review). In the 1950s, Tully was directing as many as ten films a year! No wonder they were not all good, as he had become a mere factory hand. He must have sleepwalked through THE STRANGE AWAKENING, without himself waking up. And I bet he had total amnesia for half the films he had made the year before. We can perhaps be forgiven for not knowing much about most of them.

The idea behind "Female Fiends" is pretty good, but unfortunately it's not nearly as good as it could be because of poor writing. Good idea--poorly written. That's pretty much the film.Lex Barker plays a man who awakens to find he has no idea who he is. He's told that he's the rich heir to an estate and his memory lapse and injuries (he's in a cast) are the result of an accident. However, it's pretty obvious to the viewer that this is not true. But why?! Why would a bunch of people suddenly try to convince a guy he's a member of their family?! After a bit, Barker is suspicious and begins to dig. It's a nice idea--but it resolved almost immediately after Barker begins to dig!! The film is 68 minutes long and should have been at least 80 minutes. It seems quick--rushed even. And, as a result, it's only a time-passer and no more. Sad...as the idea was pretty good. Unfortunately, the film just doesn't do much with the idea.

With films like this to his credit, it's surprising the name Montgomery Tully isn't better known. On the evidence of this and several others of his movies (Master Spy and Out of the Fog), Tully deserves to be ranked just marginally higher than the notorious Edward D. Wood. There's one important difference, though. Wood's films were so bad they're hilarious. Tully's are just bad.Tully specialised in the cheap 'quota quickies' that did so much to damage the reputation of the British film industry, and Strange Awakening serves to illustrate exactly how that damage was done. It's dull, predictable, stagy, wordy, badly scripted and poorly realised in just about every department.The film begins in France (oops, there goes the budget) where a man (Lex Barker) is saying his farewells to a woman in a preposterous hat (Monica Grey). Driving back from the airfield, Barker gives a lift to a hitchhiker (Richard Molinas) who subsequently attempts to steal his car. A struggle ensues and Barker rolls downhill, bumping his head on a tree and knocking himself out (this needs to be seen to be believed).When he comes to, Barker's character is suffering from amnesia. He is in a luxurious house, where several women and a doctor (Peter Dyneley) are on hand to fill in the gaps in his missing memory. Barker is, it would appear, missing heir Gordy Friend, a well-known lush whose poet father is a leading figure in a temperance-styled society. Friend senior having recently died, 'Gordy' is required to sign a document and recite a piece of his father's intolerant verse in order to complete the transfer of the Friend estate. Ah, if only it were that simple...To add further plot detail would be at the risk of 'spoiling' the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it (though it could be argued that Tully did a good enough job of spoiling the film himself, which consists mostly of protracted exposition and tortured plot contrivances). Whatever the merits of Hugh Wheeler's original novel (and I suspect they are few), Strange Awakening does not impress as a movie and would probably have been better left in out-of-print obscurity. Still, it's not likely to be bothering the TV schedules or DVD labels anytime soon, so you're unlikely to find your sleep disturbed by this turkey.