Mr. Wyler has turned in a tempting and frequently startling, bewitching film, but he has failed to make it any more than a low-key chiller that melts in a conventional puddle of warm blood towards the end.

Perhaps the most interesting element of John Fowles’s novel is its alternation between two narrator... By jettisoning this structure, this 1965 film has precious little to hold one’s interest, apart from Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar as the leads.

William Wyler's gloss is everywhere on the film. It is sure, professional, satisfactory as a production, and yet the whole feeling is one of gloss. The grainy, worn surface of this pitiless drama hardly ever exposes itself to us.

It is Stamp who raises The Collector to heights of parable, who brings significance to and sustains the suspense. His performance is brilliant in its gauge of the madness of a madman.