Dr Christine Allison (Susan Hayward) follows her married lover to England.
When he becomes incurably ill and in agony from the pain, he begs her to give him a merciful release with an overdose of morphine.
For the love of him, she complies and finds herself standing trial for mercy killing.
Prosecuted aggressively by Stephen Dane (Peter Finch), a wily and relentless barrister who tears her defence to shreds, she is found guilty of manslaughter and given a two-year prison sentence.
On her release, she is banned from practising medicine and so answers an advertisement for a companion-nurse.
She is shocked to discover the advertiser is none other than her old prosecuting counsel Stephen Dane.
She consents to accept the position only because of her deep sympathy with Dane’s beautiful young Irish wife, Liana (Diane Cilento), who suffers from schizophrenia and believes herself to be the cause of her father’s death in a car accident.
Christine finds herself in the centre of a web of mysterious happenings in which evidence points to the fact that Dane – a man of dark moods and violent temper, oddly preoccupied with sinister tropical plants – would be happy to have his wife relieved of her tormented life.
Before the story is finished, Christine once more faces trial for a mercy killing when Liana dies of an overdose, but this time with Stephen Dane defending her.
Or is he defending her? Is Dane fighting for her or against her?
Based on Audrey Erskine Lindop’s best-seller, I Thank A Fool is beautifully filmed in CinemaScope and Metrocolor and was shot on location in England (including the New Brighton Fairgrounds in Liverpool) and in the picturesque fishing village of Crookhaven in the south of Ireland.
Christine Allison
Susan Hayward Stephen Dane
Peter Finch Liane Dane
Diane Cilento Captain Ferris
Cyril Cusack Roscoe
Kieron Moore Ebblington
Richard Wattis Aunt Heather Chandler
Athene Seyler Woman in the Black Maria
Miriam Karlin O’Grady
Laurence Naismith Coroner
J.G. Devlin Judge
Clive Morton Nurse Drew
Brenda de Banzie Polly
Yolande Turner
Director
Robert Stevens
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Prosecuted aggressively by Stephen Dane (Peter Finch), a wily and relentless barrister who tears her defence to shreds, she is found guilty of manslaughter and given a two-year prison sentence.
