Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

jamstubell I would never have bought this early Hammer film but as it was included as a special feature on "The Curse Of Frankenstein" Blu Ray I thought I would give it a watch. The sci fi elements to the plot made it bearable but I thought the main cast were rather bland and uninteresting. I really didn't care about the characters or the love triangle that soon gains a fourth side. For me Hammer really begins with "The Quatermass Experiment" so this film and the one I watched the other day ("Stolen Face") are nothing more than curios that I suppose act as a prologue to the iconic run of films that the studio was soon to produce. 3/10 - Bad.

lloyd150 I viewed this as I was looking at titles with James Payton in them. This is a little gem that has a good story-line which leaves you wanting more. The basic premise is good and not too complicated. The main actors are strong and likable. You feel for the scientist as he tries to replicate the woman of his dreams.Do not expect scares more a complex situation. There are no great special effects it is more the dialogue than the actions which make this a great film.This is one of Hammer's better films.Barbara Payton is great in one of her final roles. There does seem to be chemistry between the actors and they grab your sympathy.

dafrieze "Four Sided Triangle" manages to do almost everything wrong. The story had possibilities: two childhood friends who have created a replicating machine fall in love with the same woman; she marries the first; the second decides to duplicate her, forgetting that the duplicate will have the same feelings as the original. It's a fairly simple story, and one that could have been handled nicely in a half-hour segment of "Twilight Zone." Here the writer and director managed to pad it out to 80 tedious minutes, beginning with a completely irrelevant description of the village in which the film takes place (sure, it seems a lovely village, but it plays absolutely no part in the plot, and after the first few minutes of travelogue, the film may just as well be taking place in New Jersey). The doctor (played inertly by James Hayter) is given a lot of narration, much of which is punctuated by platitudinous quotations from poetry. We watch the two scientists raise the money for the machine; we watch them gazing intensely at bubbling test tubes; we watch as they and the woman manipulate the machine, trying to drum up some suspense as to whether it will really duplicate the doctor's watch or not. It goes on forever. The story itself, apart from the cheesy window-dressing, doesn't begin until about the film is half over. The acting gets stagier, the pace gets choppier, the script gets clumsier. The scenes of the village at the beginning are nicely photographed. Otherwise, not one of Hammer's better offerings.

jamesraeburn2003 **CAUTION: HUGE SPOILERS** In a rural English community, two friends called Bill (STEPHEN MURRAY) and Robin (JOHN VAN EYSSEN) invent a 'reproducer', a piece of scientific equipment which can recreate any object. They are aided in their work by Dr Harvey (JAMES HAYTER), the local GP and a close friend of theirs since they were children. During the celebrations of their fantastic discovery, Robin announces that he is to marry Lena (BARBARA PAYTON), a beautiful woman who both friends have fancied since they were children. Devastated, Bill decides to use the reproducer to create a clone of Lena for himself. However, as the clone is an exact replica, she shares the same thoughts and feelings as the real Lena.FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE is an absurd but nevertheless enjoyable science-fiction melodrama. Along with STOLEN FACE (see my review), it is one of the very few films from this chapter in the history of Hammer and Terence Fisher to indicate the direction that the company would take when they became Britain's best horror studio. Both pictures share the same theme of a well to do man perverting his skills in order to win the affections of the woman he loves. For example, in STOLEN FACE, Dr Philip Ritter used his knowledge of plastic surgery to recreate the face of concert pianist Alice Brent on a deformed petty criminal because he couldn't marry Alice because she was already spoken for. The very same reason why Bill in FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE felt compelled to use his scientific invention to duplicate Lena. Also both Dr Ritter and Bill were so obsessed in their love for women that they were both unable to see that disastrous consequences could result. Both characters from these two early movies are comparable to Baron Frankenstein in Fisher's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Even though Frankentein was more concerned with bringing the dead back to life than with his love life, he also was too oblivious to the certain doom that faced him when his creature became a criminal lunatic and he intended his creature to be perfect very much as Bill and Ritter intended theirs to be. FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE must also be the only b-picture in cinema history to have the courage of it's own lunatic convictions. This is thanks largely to Terence Fisher who opts to emphasize the causes and consequences of the characters' actions and the moral outcome as well. For instance at the end of the film the screen is filled with a biblical quote "You can either have joy or power you shall not have both". This follows the climax where Bill and one of the Lena's perish in a fire. However, one of them survived and the only way to judge between the clone and the real Lena was by a scar on the back of the latter's neck. Robin is overjoyed when its the real Lena, his wife, who has survived. This is the significance of Fisher's biblical quote. Robin had been tempted by power, but once the machine was destroyed in the blaze, his one opportunity for power was lost but he still had his wife and therefore he had joy but not power. This very much sets the standards for Fisher's skill as a director, whereas most of his films from this period such as MASK OF DUST or SPACEWAYS have nothing to commend them at all. In his best films for Hammer, he had that ability to take a ridiculous storyline and give it conviction by placing attention solely on his characters and the consequences and morality of what could happen if such things did occur in the world. The cast sensibly play it straight and all are suited to their roles with James Hayter shining as Dr Harvey who aids the men in their experiments but at the same time warns them of the dangers they face. John Van Eyssen who was later the head of Columbia Pictures would appear as Jonathan Harker in Fisher's classic Dracula (1958).