Writing in late October 2025, I find THE COLLECTOR (1965) of value primarily because it features two recently deceased talents: Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar, whose breakthrough roles occurred in this film. The director was the legendary Hollywood craftsman William Wyler (1902-1981), whose last notable film was THE COLLECTOR. (He allegedly chose it over THE SOUND OF MUSIC.)
THE COLLECTOR (1965) Trailer
This US-UK co-production was an adaptation of John Fowles’ 1963 novel, which was considered quite the shocker in its day. Now, of course, THE COLLECTOR no longer seems all that upsetting, largely because it’s been so widely imitated in the ensuing years (in films ranging from THE BLIND BEAST to MICHAEL). Yet the skill with which the film adaptation was made, and the strong performances of its leads, still register.
The setting is South East England (with the filming occurring in both England and the US), where the amateur entomologist Freddie Clegg (Stamp) discovers a luxurious country house during a butterfly collecting expedition. He purchases the house, so he’ll have a place to stash an especially coveted object he yearns to “collect”: a young woman named Miranda Grey (Eggar). Freddie is what today would be termed a stalker, and also a kidnapper, trapping Miranda in an alley, chloroforming and entrapping her in a basement room of the house. The reason? As Freddie readily admits during their first meeting, he’s in love with Miranda and wants her to “get to know” him.
Freddie exposes a dangerous side after a gagged Miranda floods an upper story bathroom to catch the attention of a nosy neighbor (Maurice Dallimore). More grievously, Miranda displays her upper class intellectual bent, which triggers memories of past humiliations in the mind of the lower class Freddie (class warfare, FYI, was the John Fowles novel’s major theme).
Freddie chloroforms Miranda a second time, inspiring her to take a different tack: she tries to convince him that she is indeed in love with him (although the possibility that she may not be entirely pretending is breached). But then an unexpected tragedy occurs that upends everything, and reveals that the title character’s true motivations may not be as loving as they seem.
William Wyler’s craftsmanship was well utilized in THE COLLECTOR, which contains keenly wrought suspense that can safely be called Hitchcockian. The tightly contained narrative contributes to the effect (in paring the film down from its initial 3-hour length, Wyler famously excised a supporting role played by Kenneth More, who appears only in an early scene in which the back of his head is visible).
There’s also a sense of ambiguity that places this film ahead of the Fowles novel, which was quite blunt about delineating its protagonists’ motivations. Wyler and screenwriters Stanley Mann and John Kohn, by contrast, keep the viewer guessing about whether Miranda truly loves Freddie or is merely pretending, and what precisely Freddie’s true motives might be. The work of Terence Stamp in the title role is both sympathetic and deeply menacing, while Samantha Eggar matches him in a finely calibrated flow of emotions that range from terror to steely calculation to righteous fury (in order to accentuate her sense of isolation, Wyler apparently confined Eggar to the house set and kept her separated from Stamp).
Where the film stumbles is in its depiction of Freddie’s unquiet mental state, which is “explained” by black and white flashbacks that tend toward the hokey and obvious.
Vital Statistics
THE COLLECTOR
Columbia Pictures
Director: William Wyler
Producer: Jud Kinberg, John Korn
Screenplay: Stanley Mann, John Kohn
(Based on a novel by John Fowles)
Cinematography: Robert L. Surtees, Robert Krasker
Editing: Robert Swink
Cast: Terrence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washbourne, Maurice Dallimore