Four Sided Triangle
The pastoral English village of Howdean consisting of a couple of hundred houses and cottages on the surrounding fields, home to perhaps a thousand people and far from the impact of the war, it was where Robin, Bill and Lena grew up as friends, the barn the palace where she was their queen, they the two knights who fought for her hand, but time moved them on, Lena returning home to America and the boys studying science in Cambridge.
The trio not reunited until years later, the old barn now a workshop, Lena becomes “cook, nurse, confessor and bottlewasher” as they continue work on their invention, the Reproducer, able to convert energy directly into matter in the same way as a bomb does the reverse, Bill taking little comfort from its success when Robin and Lena announce their marriage, his only hope that she might consent to allow a duplicate of herself to be created to fill the void in his life.
Directed by Terence Fisher from a script co-written by Paul Tabori based on William F Temple’s 1949 expansion of his earlier short story, Four Sided Triangle was released in 1953, taking the central premise of the novel but lobotomising it into a simplistic tale of ill-conceived scientific endeavour with no consideration of the ethics or morality of the situation, Lena and ostensible clone Helen (Barbara Payton) portrayed as scientifically illiterate and with no opinions or drive of her own, of service only to the needs of the men in her life and all taking a back seat to the more significant implications of the new technology, both for good and ill.
Equally patronising to the woman they both love but who could never hope to understand their work, smoking, drinking and inventing but struggling to communicate with women, Robin and Bill (John Van Eyssen and Stephen Murray) offer little to differentiate themselves with only Doctor Harvey (James Hayter) sympathetic and insightful, though with typical reserve he offers gentle guidance rather than emphasising the folly of the enterprise, the already directionless and depressed Helen now facing a new emotional dilemma for which there is no precedent to guide her.
Lena with as little say in her fate as one of the guinea pigs of the early experiments, not that it would have made matters better if Bill had sought permission from Robin before creating a copy of his wife but at least questions of informed consent might have been raised, with none of the complexity or humour of the original novel Four Sided Triangle is helplessly lopsided, finding itself in a corner which can only be resolved by a tragic accident as though divine judgement had fallen upon a situation which should never have occurred.
Restored from the original negatives and presented on Blu-ray for the first time, the new edition of Four Sided Triangle is supported by two commentaries, from historian Melanie Williams and critic Thirza Wakefield and from historian Jonathan Rigby and genre expert Kevin Lyons, an overview of Payton’s career, a consideration of this early Hammer science fiction horror, an examination of the film and its themes and a gallery.
Four Sided Triangle is available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Hammer
