After living with her mother for 10 years in Italy, wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg) returns to her father's home in Nice (France). Her father is away on business, but his new wife, Jane (Ann Todd), welcomes Penny with open arms. When Penny starts encountering the corpse of her father in the summer house and in her own bedroom, Jane and the family doctor, Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) begin to question her sanity, so Penny turns to her only friend, Bob (Ronald Lewis) the family chauffeur, for help.
Scream of Fear (British title: Taste of Fear) was written and produced by English film maker Jimmy Sangster, best known for his work for Hammer Studios.
Penny explains to Dr Gerarrd that a horse fell on her and that she sustained a multiple fracture to the first lumbar vertebra and a simple fracture to the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae, meaning that there is no way her inability to walk could be hysterical.
Bob locates Father's body at the bottom of the swimming pool. He and Penny drive to the police station in Cannes. Along the way, they notice Jane standing along the road. Bob stops the car to see what is wrong, while Penny waits in the car. Suddenly, the car starts inching forward. Penny tries to reach over the seat and grab the steering wheel, then notices her dead father slumped in the front seat. The car goes over the cliff and into the water. Bob and Jane go into each others arms' and congratulate themselves on how they were able to pull it off. The next morning, they report the incident to the police just as the police are pulling the car out of the water. They tell the police that Penny and her Father went for a drive in order to get reacquainted with each other. Bob goes down to the accident scene to identify the car, and learns that only Father's body was found in it. Jane meets with her husband's solicitor to go over the will. She asks him how they will determine who died first—Penny or her father—but the solicitor becomes confused by her question and informs her that Penny committed suicide three weeks ago in Switzerland. Jane notices Penny sitting in her wheelchair overlooking the sea. She goes out to ask who she really is. "I'm Maggie Frencham, Penny's companion." She explains to Jane how she knew that something odd was going on, so she and Dr Gerrard cooked up this plan to have Maggie pretend to be Penny until they could discover just what was happening. Maggie then gets up out of the wheelchair and walks away. Jane collapses in the chair. When Bob gets home, he sees the wheelchair on the edge of a cliff and, thinking it to be Penny, he rushes forward and pushes it over into the water. The police arrest and take him away. In the final scene, Dr Gerrard puts his hand on Maggie's shoulder and says, "Come...there's nothing more for you here."
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- How long is Scream of Fear?1 hour and 21 minutes
- When was Scream of Fear released?August 22, 1961
- What is the IMDb rating of Scream of Fear?7.4 out of 10
- Who stars in Scream of Fear?
- Who wrote Scream of Fear?
- Who directed Scream of Fear?
- Who was the composer for Scream of Fear?
- Who was the producer of Scream of Fear?
- Who was the executive producer of Scream of Fear?
- Who was the cinematographer for Scream of Fear?
- Who was the editor of Scream of Fear?
- Who are the characters in Scream of Fear?Penny Appleby
- What is the plot of Scream of Fear?A wheelchair-bound young woman returns to her father's estate after 10 years, and although she's told he's away, she keeps seeing his dead body on the estate.
- What is Scream of Fear rated?Approved
- What genre is Scream of Fear?Horror and Thriller
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