Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #105229 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-04-18
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 81 minutes

Customer Reviews

Worth a viewing for sci-fi fans...
This is not really a horror picture, as you might naturally expect from the Hammer logo, and the synopsis on the back of the case. Any horror here is not visceral, and not even psychological. If anything, the horror (such as it is), is posed philosophically.

Actually a sci-fi effort, "The Four Sided Triangle" is a very good British black and white film from 1953. The production values are really pretty good, although the film was obviously made inexpensively. I liked the cast, location shooting, cinematography, and the basic overall story, which is in the best tradition of sci-fi short stories.

Two scientists create a new process to "reproduce" matter from energy (think of a cross between a photocopier and the replicators on "Star Trek"). Both scientists are in love with the same girl, and one is bound to lose when she finally chooses between them. However, the loser hits upon the idea of replicating the girl, so everyone can be happy and get what they want... at least on paper.

The gadget at the center of the tale, the "reproducer", is important but incidental. The device serves to facilitate the "what if?" quality of the story, making the normally impossible suddenly somehow possible. Scientific explanations of the device are not necessary, because the story is about how the characters react to the new problems their invention creates. In other words, the real story is between the characters, and unlike today's cineplex-infesting tripe, the focus is not on the special effects.

The film asks big questions that it never answers, and even then, it only asks them indirectly. Regardless, while the film is not completely successful, it does manage satisfy.

Bill and Robin Hammer out their differences
Bill, Robin, and Lena (Stephen Murray, John Van Eyssen, and Barbara Payton) where friends since childhood. After diverging lives, they soon combine their talents to build a replicator, a device that can copy anything making a precise copy. Soon Lena must make up her mind as to who she will marry as it was inevitable. She picks Robin leaving bill as odd man out. No worry as Bill envisions a radical plan that we have all ready guesses. What will be the results?

This early Hammer film may have been a precursor to "The Fly" (1958.) At least the technical part. However, I believe as with all good Sci-Fi and many other genres this is a vehicle for people, their emotions, and how we deal with each other. The film is in the old English style and in black and white. It starts out in the tradition of "Our Town" as the local doctor narrates the story to us as a third party.

FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE - Good Sci-Fi flick for its Time
Four Sided Triangle was a good sci-fi flick for its time and I rate it at four stars. The plot was a bit farfetched and involved a reproduction machine that may as well have been Star Trek's Transporter (except for leaving the original intact).

When one of the male leads decides to reproduce the girl his partner marries (because he wants one too), this beautiful 50's blond is cloned, thoughts and all. Her duplicate wakes up still in love with the other guy. This plot might have made a good Twilight Zone or Woody Allan story. I actually think I remember seeing this one on TV and liked it then twice as much as I did a couple of days ago.