All Slights Deserved

If you follow the movies then it's familiar story. A young director has a breakthrough success and, heady with his new status, decides to follow it with something completely different. The public aren't impressed and the film bombs. Chastened by this hard lesson the director reluctantly retreats to safer ground, destined to remain working in the genre that first brought success. That was more or less what happened to George Romero when he chose to follow the flesh-eating ghouls of Night of the Living Dead with groovy love story There's Always Vanilla . Like many before and since Romero discovered that he didn't quite possess the Midas touch; and subsequently he's all but disowned the film, describing it as "a total mess". But hold on a second... didn't I mention a very similar response from Alfred Hitchcock to his Number Seventeen just the other day? Could this be another neglected gem hidden away in the depths of a renowned director's filmo...