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When the rapist of a schoolgirl escalates his crimes to murder, Detective Velyan has to rely on schoolteacher Julie West to act as bait in drawing the perpetrator out.

Transferred from a beautifully-preserved BFI print, Assault is one of those B-movie potboilers that probably doesn’t deserve the high definition upgrade. Its interest is more in recognising people before they were famous than trying to work out which of the cast is the murderer.

Anthony Ainley and David Essex feature in a cast that introduces Lesley-Anne Down as the traumatised victim, though the main roles are played by Frank Finlay (Lifeforce) and Suzy Kendall (Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage). Even Freddie Jones turns up, in the sort of role now played by son Toby.

It’s all very formulaic and the soundtrack is ridiculously over the top, but the point of view shots from the killer’s perspective were still fairly fresh at the time. There’s some bad pseudo-psychology and assumption jumping, but you might just hang in there to see if your theory was correct. And let’s not even start on the way that (even the supposedly respectable) male characters perv at the schoolgirls and nurses as if in a Carry On film.

Verdict: A 70s artefact that takes a nasty premise (schoolgirl rape and murder), throws in a whodunnit plot and tries to blast us with silly science. It wants to be a giallo but just doesn’t have the style – a curiosity for sure. 6/10

Nick Joy

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