The Collector (1965) on Netflix
A lonely butterfly collector abducts Miranda Grey, an art student he has followed from Reading, and holds her in the cellar of his farmhouse. He promises to free her after four weeks.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.5/1013,377 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Freddie Clegg, a lonely young man who collects butterflies, buys a 17th-century Kent farmhouse with his football pools winnings. He has been following Miranda Grey, an art student in London, since they rode the same bus in Reading. One day he chloroforms her in Hampstead and takes her to the windowless stone cellar of his house, furnished with a bed, clothes, painting tools and an electric heater. Miranda assumes he wants a ransom she knows her father cannot pay, or that he means to use her sexually. Freddie says he wants neither. He tells her he loves her and promises to release her after four weeks, time he believes she needs to get to know him. He allows her small luxuries, such as baths and sunlight under his supervision.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Collector (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Three weeks into rehearsals on The Collector, William Wyler fired Samantha Eggar over her performance, shutting down production. She was rehired only on condition that character actress Kathleen Freeman coach her on set, and off-camera Eggar was allowed to speak to Freeman alone.
- Terry Southern contributed an uncredited revision of the screenplay for William Wyler after the producers wanted Miranda to escape rather than face the novel's darker ending. Wyler rejected Southern's happier ending.
- For the two central roles, Wyler considered Sarah Miles and Natalie Wood for Miranda Grey, and Anthony Perkins and Dean Stockwell for Freddie Clegg, before choosing Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar for what he saw as their chemistry of sexual tension and awkwardness.
- At the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar won Best Actor and Best Actress for The Collector, the first time in the festival's history that two performers from the same film took both awards.
- Wyler's original cut of The Collector ran three hours; under pressure from his producers he removed 35 minutes of prologue material starring Kenneth More, saying the footage was among the finest he ever shot.
- The Collector gave William Wyler his 12th and final Academy Award nomination for Best Director, the last of a record run.
- Disappointed with The Collector, novelist John Fowles insisted on writing the screenplay himself for the next adaptation of his work, The Magus, which became a critical disaster with blame laid on drastic rewrites of his script.
