"This film could save your child's life" declared The Daily Herald on April 3, 1960, but the major London dailies were having none of it. Despite bearing the stamp of approval from both Scotland Yard and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Don't Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960) was widely reviled for its unblinking depiction of child molestation in the United Kingdom (thought the drama was set in Canada) and the social myopathy that makes respectable citizens complicit with sexual predators. Based on the Roger Garis play The Pony Cart (first staged in New York by Lamont Johnson in 1954, the drama was itself drawn from actual events that had transpired in the playwright's New Jersey hometown), this was something completely different for Hammer Film Productions, who normally avoided message films to tender such unprepossessing public entertainment as The Abominable Snowman (1957), Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and Dracula (US: Horror of Dracula, 1958). (It's worth remembering that release of Michael Powell's similarly scandalous Peeping Tom was a mere two months away.) Directed by Cyril Frankel and shot by cinematographer Freddie Francis (in his first job for Hammer, for whom he would direct several films), Never Take Sweets from a Stranger was co-financed by Columbia Pictures, who arranged an American release under the alternate title Never Take Candy from a Stranger. Again, condemnatory reviews that saw sensationalism where none was intended kept the release in limited distribution. Hammer never again attempted anything quite so controversial or, it might well be argued, so badly needed.

By Richard Harland Smith