In real life, Barbara Payton was American-born, had a brief Hollywood career, during which time she had some romantic liaisons which received a great deal of negative press and which resulted in her relocating to England to make pictures there. In 1953’s Four Sided Triangle, she plays a Brit who goes to America, fails to find success in art, music or writing, and returns to the UK to be the object of desire of two men she knew as boys from her childhood, only for her life to be turned upside-down by when one of those becomes obsessed with her. Seems like in real-life and in this movie, Payton should have stayed away from men.
This early Hammer production is set in one of those idyllic and pastoral villages, complete with a squire (Percy Marmont) in his manor house. He also has a son, John Van Eyssen, whom we first see as a different actor playing him as a lad, engaged in a mock swordfight with his best friend, who will eventually grow up to be Stephen Murray. This faux-duel is for the hand of their mutual friend, the young iteration of Payton playacting as the queen.
All this is observed by James Hayter, the village doctor who will be the audience surrogate and narrator. He is also a bit of a surrogate father to Murray, and helps feed his insatiable intellectual appetite.
When the trio of kids become adults, Payton finds herself in the unenviable position of being surrogate mother to the now-adult Eyssen and Murray. The boys have set up their clubhouse in the same barn in which we saw them playing as kids. Now the men are working at being genuine mad scientists, or at least, Murray is the technical genius. The two have been working on a device which makes exact copies of anything through a process that does the opposite of what we see every day with assorted matter converted to energy. Imagine a burning log giving off heat. Their process is like that in reverse, converting energy into matter, which would be like creating a log from heat. That feels to me like an inversion of cause and effect.
They call this device a reproducer, though it turns out only Eyssen has any hope of reproducing, as he and Payton announce their intention to get married. Murray is despondent, with him biding farewell to them as they depart for their honeymoon with what must be the saddest and tiniest wave I have ever seen. Actually, the Brits are pretty reserved, so maybe this was an enthusiastic wave, as far as they are concerned.
While the couple is away, Murray has been continuing the experiments with the duplicating device by moving onto living things. The first subject to survive is a rabbit, though he sees little reason in doing that: “I’m not interested in turning out rabbits by the million. Nature will take care of that.” Apparently, unsuccessful experiments were first tried with a guinea pig, though it could not be resuscitated. He claims to have even built a tiny iron lung for it, and I sure wish we could have seen that.
When the newlyweds have returned, Murray convinces Payton to let him replicate her, so as to have a copy for himself. Just imagine how a conversation like this might go: “Will you let me make a clone of you to be my fuck doll?” And Hayter even encourages her to go through with this, as if it won’t be any skin off her back. I guess it won’t, as the skin will be on the back of her clone with which Murray wants to make the beast with two backs.
The operation is a success, but almost too much so. The doppel-Payton also has all her memories of the original, which results in such moments as her waking up and calling for Eyssen. The original model had also previously expressed suicidal thoughts before the replication, so the latest model keeps trying to off herself. By the end of the film, he’s essentially “resetting” the memory of the duplicate through shock treatment. My wife: “Will she be like an infant?!”
We won’t find out, though I won’t say what happens or anything which transpires after that. One thing I will call out, however, is how pointless it seems to have both women dress identically in this scene. The only reason for this is so either will be confused for the other. It is a decision made by people writing a screenplay and not what anybody in real life would do.
I like the central premise of the film, though it did seem to be stretched a bit thin. I also didn’t find fault in any of the performances, though I also didn’t find any of them to be detailed characterizations with subtle nuances. It doesn’t feel like any of these people have a life beyond the exact moments we see them on the screen. And too much of the scenes in the lab is people calling out numbers and staring intently at things offscreen, as if this is a really intense game of bingo. Instead, the moments which really sell the magic of the duplicator is outsiders the process, their faces filled a mixture of wonder and terror.
Unfortunately, there is also an unwelcome air of smug superiority to the proceedings, with the film bookended by different quotes from the Bible. There are too many stray lines like “A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.”
Though Four Sided Triangle isn’t completely successful, it is interesting. Largely, that is because of some of the works it foreshadows. Just the idea of somebody having the memories of another brought to my mind the replicants from Blade Runner. But it doesn’t do much with the various aspects of these doppelgangers which it introduces and then abandons. And polyamory isn’t directly addressed, but something about the doomed relationship here scans like a reason why such relationships don’t tend to be very successful. I know one thing they couldn’t explore, but still feels like a lost opportunity, is the possibility of Eyssen having a three-way which still remaining entirely faithful to his wife.
Dir: Terrence Fisher
Starring Barbara Payton, James Hayter, Stephen Murray, John Van Eyssen
Watched on Hammer Films UK UHD blu-ray