Four Sided Triangle, 1953.
Directed by Terence Fisher.
Starring Barbara Payton, James Hayter, Stephen Murray, John Van Eyssen, and Percy Marmont.
SYNOPSIS:
A scientist creates an exact replica of the woman he loves when she marries his childhood friend.
This 4K UHD release is the second to come from the resurrected Hammer Films stable following the release of the excellent Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter box set from earlier this year. What made that set so desirable for collectors was not the movie itself, which had been readily available in various formats over the years, but the level of care and attention that was brought to the restoration, resulting in a five-disc box set that contained every possible version of the movie, a host of brand new extras featuring surviving cast members and gorgeous packaging that, even if you didn’t particularly like the main feature, made for the kind of collector’s item that would make any other boutique label considerably jealous.
So, what do we have here? Well, for starters what we don’t have is a horror classic, dusted down and presented in glorious Technicolor with your favourite notable names from the Hammer stables doing what they do best. However, when you press play on the main feature there are a few names in the credits that bring about that warm, cosy feeling that more familiar Hammer movies often bring, namely actor John Van Eyssen, producer Michael Carreras and, most notably, director Terence Fisher, the man who would go on to helm many of what we now call Hammer Horror classics.
Predating X The Unknown and The Curse of Frankenstein – Hammer’s more notable forays into sci-fi horror – by a few years, Four Sided Triangle is a romantic drama filtered through a sci-fi lens. Based on the novel by William F. Temple, the story centres around childhood friends Bill, Robin and Lena, plus village doctor Dr. Harvey (James Hayter), who narrates the film. As children, Bill and Robin fought for Lena’s attention but when Lena (Barbara Payton) went away to college, Bill (Stephen Murray) and Robin (John Van Eyssen) became firm friends and scientists, working together on a major project in their barn where they can replicate any object in exact detail. When Lena comes back from college, both men fall in love with her, but it is Robin who marries her, forcing the jealous Bill to further his experiments and try to replicate a person. We can see where this is going…
Opening with a very quaint and picturesque vision of 1950s England village life, the 4K UHD restoration brings the black-and-white imagery to life, the clarity and sharpness giving the picture a freshness that makes you think you are not watching a movie that is over 70 years old. What hasn’t aged so well, however, are the plummy English accents that the actors bring to their roles, which are a sign of the era the film was made in of course, but in John Van Eyssen and Stephen Murray you have two leads who take different approaches to their delivery and neither of them nail it, with Murray overdoing it like he is onstage and shouting so the back row can hear him, and Van Eyssen’s quiet and dry reading of the script is as lame as his short but memorable appearance as Jonathan Harker in Hammer’s Dracula five years later.
But it is James Hayter and Barbara Payton who steal the show, with Hayter’s warm presence and sickly-sweet line delivery the perfect antidote to Stephen Murray’s scenery-chewing. Dr. Harvey is a bit of a strange character as, for a medical man, he is not particularly enthusiastic about the science that Bill and Robin are working on, but this being Hammer his role is economically written so we are just to accept he is a doctor and the village residents trust him as a pillar of society more than someone practical, and he is essentially the moral compass for the audience to engage with, a character trait that Hammer revisited with Paul Kremper in The Curse of Frankenstein.
Barbara Payton isn’t really given that much to do but her presence is felt throughout the film, such is her sassy ‘blonde bombshell’ persona. This was during the downslide in Payton’s career – and her real-life story is a tragic one – but she gives it her all with what little direction she has, and she adds some much-needed colour, if you will, to an otherwise male-driven fantasy story. Yes, if you hadn’t guessed it already Bill makes an exact copy of Lena and calls her Helen, but this leads to problems as Helen not only has Lena’s physical attributes but also her memories, meaning that when Helen meets Robin, she too falls in love with him.
This being 1950s sci-fi there isn’t much in the way of special effects and the only real set design comes in the shape of Bill’s lab, which echoes Universal’s Frankenstein with all manner of glass implements and flashing lights, so we are reliant on the script to carry the story, and looking at it through a 2025 lens there are moral dilemmas and social commentaries regarding gender roles and the nature of friendship bubbling away that perhaps the writers at the time were not overly aware of, making Four Sided Triangle a bit deeper than a cursory first glance may reveal.
Hammer would explore similar themes later, with the likes of Frankenstein Created Woman and Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde giving audiences and scholars the chance to discuss such topics in the guise of genre cinema, but there is an innocence to Four Sided Triangle that gives it a certain charm, something that Terence Fisher’s workmanlike direction didn’t quite bring out to the full, but it is a fascinating time capsule.
Some of these themes and ideas are discussed at length in the numerous special features that Hammer have included, and it is here where Four Sided Triangle is worth (re)discovering. Included are two audio commentaries, one by film historians Melanie Williams and Thirza Wakefield, and the other by the always entertaining author Jonathan Rigby and critic Kevin Lyons, but of particular interest is the ‘I Am Not Ashamed’ featurette that sees film historian Lucy Bolton going through the troubled life and career of Barbara Payton, which should serve as a warning on the dangers of fame.
There is also ‘Things To Come’, where writer Neil Sinyard offers up a look at the sexual politics on play in the film, plus ‘In the Sticks Sci-Fi!’, a discussion between the BFI’s William Fowler and Vic Pratt regarding the sci-fi and horror elements of the film and how it sowed the seeds for what was to come for Hammer, and both are very much worth your time, offering up perspectives that you could miss on a single viewing and certainly elevate the material on subsequent rewatches.
The set also includes recreations of posters and pressbooks from the time, a booklet featuring writings from the Hammer archives, the film and extras on a standard Blu-ray and a gorgeous rigid slipcase to house it all in. For collector’s and Hammer completists rather than casual viewers, this definitive edition of Four Sided Triangle continues the level of quality laid down by Captain Cronos: Vampire Hunter will hopefully pave the way for more treasures to be unearthed and given a contemporary upgrade. As a standalone movie, Four Sided Triangle is a little flat and bit of a plodder, but it has charm and when put into context by the superb supplementary material included there is much more you can mine from it. Now Hammer, how about giving Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed a similar release?
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
