The success of The Collector depends almost entirely on its two stars, Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar, since scarcely anyone else is in the movie. Stamp probably delivers the performance of his career as the wonderfully named Freddy Clegg. After winning an Oscar nomination for his second movie, Billy Budd (1962), Stamp took something of a hiatus -- he was one of the leading figures of London's Swinging Sixties -- and didn't appear again until The Collector came out in 1965. He again made a splash, winning a joint acting award with Eggar from the Cannes Film Festival. It's a truly offbeat role, and Stamp gives no quarter in helping the audience feel at ease with him. It's even more remarkable in relation to the radiant innocence of Samantha Eggar, who only got the role after Natalie Wood turned it down. Wood went off to make Inside Daisy Clover, and Eggar was nominated for an Academy Award. William Wyler, one of the studio system's best directors, stands at his usual distance from the material, which has a rather stage-bound feel and lacks a real sense of claustrophobia. Though he made three more features before he died, this film basically marked the end of Wyler's three decades of constant production and enormous success.