Based upon the novel by James Hadley Chase, Joseph Losey’s film tackles head-on the implications of a cultural phenomenon that was in full bloom at the time of its making: that of the “angry young man” artist, embraced for his exotic roughness by the cultural artistocracy.

Stanley Baker is the Welsh writer whose tales of the pits have made him the pet of the Venice Film Festival – despite a shabby, long-kept secret regarding their authenticity. Moreau is the dissolute, heartless femme fatale whose cruel sexual games play into his own sense of inadequacy, while the stunningly beautiful Virna Lisi plays the privileged, adoring Italian fiancée who can’t begin to comprehend his self-destructive drives.

As bitterly acute about class and cinema culture as it is lushly intense in its analysis of sexual obsession, this rarely-seen gem also offers the chance to see Moreau at her most forcefully, ferally seductive – her frequent disrobings, dramatic departures and solitary sulks, all appropriately backed by a repeated Billie Holliday motif.