The Road Builder (1971)

Directed by Alastair Reid
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

A handyman smooth talks his way into a job at a Gothic mansion owned by a blind mother and her aging daughter. Despite her initial misgivings, the daughter, played by Patricia Neal, eventually falls in love with the much younger man. She also overlooks the fact that he is a serial killer who habitually rapes local young women and buries their bodies in remote locations (the film also goes by the title "The Night Digger"). It's a mostly slow story, with the emphasis on characters and the psychological underpinnings, but is entirely shot on location in a fantastic mansion. The score by Bernard Herrmann inevitably invites comparisons to Hitchcock, and if not quite up to the standards of the master, a nonetheless good film for those that can appreciate its methodical style.