Product: The Third Secret (1964)
Rating: 1.0
What is the third secret? Who cares?!
When a famous psychiatrist commits suicide, his daughter (Pamela Franklin) asks an investigative news reporter (Stephen Boyd) - and one of her father's patients - to prove it was really murder.This is a quirky and moody (one could say `dreary') mystery that quickly becomes tiresome due to a poor script and melodramatic direction. Pamela Franklin always was a mature child actress, but here, at 14, she speaks and acts like a 40-year old woman and it's just not believable. Boyd overacts as the reporter who is at turns testy and dull with unexplained fits of rage. The two supposedly have a friendship, which is never explained or justified and they spend the whole story shrieking at each other. We also sit through a series of red herrings when it's obvious who did what.While the movie is really awful, it is of interest to see Richard Attenborough wasted in a small role with bad make-up and a pretty, young up-and-comer named Judi Dench in her movie debut. Other than that, this is a manipulative, overwrought drama that should have had a better script and proper direction.