Asthmatic psychotic terrorizes pretty San Francisco bank teller and her kid sister after hatching a plan to get the working girl to steal $100K from her job. Written by the Gordons via their book "Operation Terror", this crime-drama from director Blake Edwards has a sterling black-and-white look, a fine Henry Mancini score, and good performances by a first-rate cast. Unfortunately, the script feels half-finished, with details and subplots never made clear. A great deal of time is spent examining the psycho's relationship with an (innocent?) Oriental woman and her ailing son (there's also a tie-in to the case with the murder of a local woman who painted mannequins, yet the sequence appears to be included solely to feature her corpse hanging amongst the fake limbs and torsos--stylish but distracting). There's a lot of chatter amongst Glenn Ford and his G-men about whose money victimized Lee Remick will actually be removing from the bank, yet when the time comes she seems to be acting all alone (with suspicious eyes on her). Edwards paces the film carefully, steadily, though in the beginning this slow build works against the scenario's effectiveness (this may lose some restless viewers before the movie even gets cooking). The locale is wonderful, and Remick and Ford have a nice rapport, even if nothing is built upon their obvious attraction. When the big finish comes, it's unsatisfying; we're left pondering all the empty bases the screenplay failed to cover. **1/2 from ****
Review of Experiment in Terror
