Paranoiac

Paranoiac is a British horror thriller about the Ashby family, whose troubles began eleven years earlier when the parents died in a crash and their son Tony took his own life. What remains is a decaying country estate, a brother, Simon, whose drinking and money problems have left him desperate, and a sister, Eleanor, whose fragile state has long been dismissed by those around her. When a young man turns up claiming to be the dead Tony, his arrival unsettles the household and raises the question of whether he is the missing heir or someone passing himself off as one. Simon, who stands to gain financially, has reason to want the newcomer gone.

The film was directed by Freddie Francis and written by Jimmy Sangster, with Anthony Hinds producing for Hammer Film Productions and The Rank Organisation. It was released in January 1963 and runs 80 minutes. In Francis's directing career it followed The Day of the Triffids and preceded Nightmare, The Evil of Frankenstein and several later horror titles. The cast includes Janette Scott as Eleanor, Oliver Reed as Simon, Sheila Burrell as Aunt Harriet, Maurice Denham, Alexander Davion and Liliane Brousse.

Critical and audience response has been moderate and consistent: a critics' rating of 6.4 out of 10 from five reviews, 6.7 out of 10 on IMDb from around 3,700 votes, and 6.6 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller number of votes. The film sits among the studio's early 1960s psychological thrillers rather than its gothic monster output.