Trivia for
The Collector (1965) More at IMDbPro »

• Kenneth More was originally cast as Samantha Eggar's secret lover but all of his scenes were cut from the final print.
  
  
• Natalie Wood turned down the role of Miranda Grey.
  
  
• When Freddie is stalking Miranda she walks by a cinema that shows that Ben-Hur is playing. Director William Wyler also directed Ben-Hur.
  
  
• Sarah Miles and Julie Christie were considered for the part of Miranda.
  
  
• For the sequence in which Freddie drags Miranda through the rain, William Wyler had prop men throw buckets of water over Samantha Eggar without warning between takes. Eggar later spoke of how Wyler succeeded in making her feel "defenseless," hence deepening her performance.
  
  
• Originally the film was to be made in black and white.
  
  
• According to Terence Stamp, Wyler wouldn't let Samantha Eggar off the set during the day. He also wouldn't allow her to eat with anyone else during the lunch break. Stamp argues Wyler knew what he was doing, as the director whispered to him one day on set, "I know this looks cruel, but we're going to get a great performance out of her."
  
  
• While the film is overall faithful to John Fowles' novel, the scene where Freddie's neighbor comes over and Miranda tries to get his attention by flooding the bathroom was created for the film and was not in the novel.
  
  
• The story makes constant reference to Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". In "The Tempest" Miranda is Prospero's daughter. Fred Clegg also refers to himself as "Ferdinand", or "Ferdie" to disguise his identity. Ferdinand is the name of Alonso's son in the play. Miranda, however, calls Fred "Caliban", who is an ugly misshapen dwarf in the play.
  
  

• SPOILER: According to Samantha Eggar, "The ending of The Collector, in fact, is almost illegal, because the Stamp character, Freddie Clegg, gets away with murder, and you weren't allowed to do that in those days." However, John Trevelyan, the censor, who had recently married a woman about half his age, nodded off during the screening, and never saw the ending of the film. He woke up and signed off on it. Had he been awake, we might have had a very different film, or people "might have been arrested".
  
  

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