ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

kidboots A lonely ill lit road, a car trailing a girl who is then persuaded to hop in for a lift, a clap of thunder then the credits start for this disquieting movie that unfortunately is still topical today. Also unfortunate is that luminous Christina Gregg, who was just tremendous as Jean and who should have been knocking back film offers with a stick after this, chose not to pursue a film career, but soon vanished into obscurity after a few television appearances.While waiting for a bus on a lonely bush lane Jean answers a call that comes through at a nearby phone booth. The accidental caller sounds like a smooth voiced charmer who keeps the innocent girl talking, trying to persuade her to reveal her name and to let him call her the next day which she does agree to. He rings again, same time, same phone booth and by discreet questions learns that the box is in an isolated position and he then starts to "groom" her by preying on her vulnerability and youth - even confessing he finds her voice sexy!! Of course he asks her to keep their conversation a secret but luckily she can't help confiding in the local bus conductress (Dandy Nicholls from "Till Death Us Do Part") who tries to bring her down to earth and, more importantly, her younger sister Ann. Janina Faye is very good as the younger sister who has lately embraced Buddhism and is busily writing letters to the local gentry condemning blood sports etc. There was even a red herring thrown in involving a man in a sports car who tries to use the call box, then starts to chat Jean up!! And when Jean finally comes face to face with the man (we, the viewers never do, to us he is always the faceless man) her expression shows that far from being the suave man of her dreams, he is pretty ordinary looking and far older and uglier than she had imagined.It turns out to be Ann who winds up in danger. The initial hitchhiker turns up dead in a barn and the sisters' parents, reading about it in the paper put a ban on their activities that night but Jean and Ann try to outwit them by agreeing to go to the local cinema. Jean is intending to meet her mysterious stranger but Ann, who is worried about her being in such a lonely place at night follows her. By a series of fortunate mistakes Jean finds herself at her uncle's pub but overhearing a strange man on the phone to "Samantha" is convinced some other girl is in danger - never dreaming it is her sister. Her Uncle Ron comes across as a prize chump - with all the graphic details of the murder in the paper and Jean quite beside herself that a girl is in danger down by the bus stop, he is not at all fussed at trying to convince her that she should walk down to the bus stop to catch one home - at 10 o'clock at night!!! - but when he does act he acts fast!!An unsettling last scene, proving the problem will never go away - when the parents question how Ann managed to get to her destination, seeing no buses ran that time of night, she admitted she hitchhiked and was picked up by "just some strange man"!! Not very comforting for parents leaving the cinema!!Starting with "Never Take Sweets From a Stranger" to "Don't Talk to Strange Men", poor little Janina Faye was caught in a morality movie morass. She definitely moved on from sweet young things as I can remember her playing a very bratty Amy in a British production of "Little Women" from 1970 and being in all the teen magazines of the time ("Fab", "Jackie" etc). Just lately I saw her in a Thriller episode "Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin" as the flatmate you wouldn't want as a flatmate - you know the type who borrow your dresses without permission and steal your food from the fridge, so she must have relished playing obnoxious roles!!!Highly Recommended.

Spikeopath Released as the support feature to The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Don't Talk to Strange Men is a very effective creeper that is worthy of a larger audience. Clocking in at just over an hour in running time, film thrives on tension building and mood without having to spill a drop of blood. Story effectively is about a teenage girl called Jean (Christina Gregg), who whilst waiting for her bus on a secluded country lane, answers the phone ringing at the phone box situated by the stop. The voice on the phone is a charming and well spoken man, he strikes up a conversation with the intrigued girl and it's not long before the two of them are arranging to speak to each other at the same time tomorrow, and the next day…Jean begins fantasising about the man, conjuring up images of the perfect male. They are destined to meet up, does she not know these are dangerous times? Where young ladies fall prey to predatory monsters… The settings are perfect, Jean and her family live in some idyllic country village, the phone box and bus stop that houses the verbal "grooming" is at the junction of two pretty country lanes, and even the pub where Jean goes to help out is the kind of petite "off the beaten track" variety. It's these locations that give off a false sense of security, a normality of easy going life where nothing can go wrong…But as we know all too well these days, nowhere is safe and parents constantly live in fear for their children. With that, Don't Talk to Strange Men is something of a film ahead of its time, substitute naive Jean's phone box "relationship" with that of today's Internet groomers of youngsters, and, well, you get my point I'm sure. Neatly directed by Pat Jackson (The Feminine Touch), the film is structured in such a way that we the audience get fretful as each day, and each phone conversation, passes. Where once was this attractive young lady framed by countryside and the old fashioned value of the red phone box, now is replaced by surroundings that are too quiet and a big red beacon of impending doom! It's an astute turning of the table, a testament to good writing and excellent directional pacing. And how nice to report that the ending, too, has something up its sleeve to reveal. The cast is minimal but very effective, with Gregg doing well to convince us of her love yearning naivety, Dandy Nicholls (Hue & Cry) memorable (wasn't she always?) as the wise bus conductor and Janina Faye (The Horror of Dracula) stealing the film as Jean's younger, politico activist in waiting, sister. A lesson in how to get the maximum unease from such a simple premise, Don't Talk to Strange Men comes highly recommended. 8/10

sophie_burgess I have always liked this film and had the chance recently to see it again as a friend taped it. It is a tale about a young girl who falls for a man she has talked to only by telephone at a remote call box. Lots of period footage of the girl and her young sister with their parents at home in their middle-class English country home. When you view the "over the call box courtship" of the nice fellow who wants to meet the young Christina Gregg you can identify with what you hear in the media today, about the way certain people court youngsters in Internet chat rooms with youngsters of today. Very thought provoking and at times charming little movie.....I wonder why they never broadcast these movies nowadays - it is still not available on DVD. I sometimes wonder what other little gems like this I am not aware of.

FilmFlaneur Pat Jackson's modest psychological thriller is no masterpiece, but is an excellent example of one of the better things to be found in the supposed quota-quickie wasteland of 50's and 60's UK cinema. It begins ominously with a pick up on a dark street. A young girl enters a car as the titles roll, to be menaced by the driver. An jump cut later and a body is discovered by some children, hidden under some straw. This discovery scene, while providing a suitably dramatic jolt, is in the event rather flat and perfunctory. Jackson's forte lies in manipulating the audience with menace (for instance leaving the assailant faceless throughout). The latest victim, so artlessly uncovered, denies the audience the chance of fabricating its own terror.How one responds to `Don't Talk..' depends largely on how one views Jean, the romantically gauche heroine (Christine Gregg, who in a short career also appeared in Corman's minor `Young Racers' (1963) as well as the limp `Cover Girl Killer' (1959)). Her accidental interception of the stranger's call, growing fascination with his voice and suave masculinity, and eventual decision to meet him alone in a dark lane, demands willing suspension of disbelief. A similar response attaches itself to Rose in `Brighton Rock' (1948), another timid `victim-to-be'. In that film response to emotional intimidation (by Pinkie) is infuriatingly compliant but gives the film much of its power. Similarly, Jean's emotional vulnerability, no matter how far her naivity stretches reason, gives the present film much of its suspense. Will she or won't she meet "the strangler"?Jean's life is neatly compartmentalised, away from any real experience of life. We see her either with her dull and doting parents, or at `The Chequers' (the pub where she baby sits), in her shared bedroom with her precocious 14 year old sister Ann, on the bus with Molly the conductor, or in the phone box waiting for or taking her calls. Most important in her life, at least as the events of the film are concerned, is the latter. At first the box seems innocuous enough and it is shot almost incidentally. Then as the film progresses and it assumes greater significance in her life, the camera begins to view it flat on until, as an ominous shape, it hovers in the background of Jean's rendezvous, almost a monolithic suitor in its own right. Finally, as a hand reaches into disconnect Ann's frantic last call, it becomes a claustrophobic chamber of terror.Ann (Jenina Faye), Jean's confidant and rapt audience for romantic fantasies, plays a crucial part in the film. With a young girl's fickleness she announces to her astonished parents that she has become a Buddhist. This interest in a religion with a strong emphasis on reincarnation, provides a neat parallel to the love-struck Jean's statement a little later. Returning from her second phone conversation, (and having `re christened' herself Samantha) she says that she feels as if she has been `born again'. Earlier Ann's condemnation of blood sports and the ensuing discussion with Mr Painter, her proposed letter of complaint to the gentry, echoes the more immediate `hunt' outside, her sister as prey. Later it is she who rushes to her sister's help, and provides the film's final irony as to do it, it emerges, she had caught a lift from a complete stranger.Jackson's direction is unobtrusive and low key, being content with some modest dollying. He avoids dramatic close ups and such tricks of the cinematographer's trade to artificially raise suspense. Instead he stages one or two remarkable long takes - partly, one assumes, to lower shooting costs - but which still stand out. One is the extended dialogue that Jean has second time around in the phone box. For long minutes Jackson's camera focuses in unblinkingly in on this innocent girl, who is unmistakeningly falling for that reassuring, civilised voice on the other end. The prolonged nature of our gaze, and the young woman's implied captivity within the barred windows of the kiosk, combine and make the audience uneasy. The conversations that ensue, carrying the implication of sexual abuse and murder, are especially unsettling to a modern audience alert to such moral panics - particularly when the younger sister is abducted at the end. Jackson's most interesting use of the long take occurs as Jean rushes to leave The Chequers to make her next phone rendezvous. He shoots a long minute or two from a viewpoint just outside of the front doorlooking into the hall. Jean, panicking to leave on time, rushes to and fro. Another director might have cut away from Jean's nervous impatience. But by letting Jean dart around the narrow hallway at length, Jackson make a virtue out of visual economy. This extended shot creates suspense more naturally than any editing could do. And through all this nervous bustling Ron, the leisurely landlord, asks for things while remaining out of our sight - in effect, just another demanding, disembodied, voice in Jean's life.So Jean goes off to her final rendezvous. The climactic scenes are less effective, baring signs of a rushed wrap-up (including a very unimpressive day-for-night match during Ron's struggle with the abductor). In the build up to the denouement, Jackson shows Ann film watching having been sent off to the cinema by Jean to create an alibi for her sister's liaison. Aptly, Ann is watching a suspenseful sequence on the screen, one which she cannot enjoy while thinking of her sister's imminent danger (to which she shortly rushes off to thwart). There's a neat mirror reference here, back to the audience's own contemplation of unfolding events.All in all, Jackson's work is a pleasant surprise which makes one regret he was not able to work with larger budgets. Rarely seen, `Don't Speak to Strange Men' is nothing to keep quiet about.