Film Reviews by CH

The J. B. Priestley revival has continued apace, what with the National Theatre's continually touring production of An Inspector Calls. This film, however, is less well known, despite a dapper performance by Alec Guiness as Mr. Bird who draws together an ensemble cast. Sid James and Ernest Thesiger together is the most unlikely pairing until Sid appeared with Sean Connery in Hell Drivers. In fact, it has something in common with An Inspector Calls, for this is a tale about a small-time salesman who learns that he is going to die - and decides to go on a bit of a spree (at any rate, to somewhere resembling Bournemouth, spiv Sid laments being thwarted in a desire to sojourn in Brighton. For all the realism of this interestingly and diversely populated hotel, Guinness is as much an allegorical figure as the Inspector, one whose presence calls upon the others to study the course of their lives (as he himself has done, after being galvanised by a canny tailor to splash out on some fine jackets). With many an angle - and a neat camera angle - upon post-War Britain, this film resonates as much seventy years on.

Softly lit, her hair shining on the gallows while drums beat and white birds wait upon the Tower roof, Nova Pilbeam is as striking as ever she was during that all-too-brief run of films during the Thirties, one which ended with her husband's wartime death - and a retreat which lasted until her death a few years ago. Tudor Rose is not her best showing, lumbered as it is by the need to explain machinating characters as one follows another through this chunk of history, when Kings and Queens did not get to sit long upon the Throne, and a cannon marked the sound of the executioner's axe for those out of its earshot. A series of sometimes neat scenes (Henry VIII's deathbed is a corker), it lacks dramatic sweep. As indeed could be said of the mid-Eighties incarnation of this sad story: Lady Jane, with Helena Bonham-Carter.

Thirtysomething paperback writer Charles Bronson takes up with sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Susan George in the South Kensington of 1969, and they nip to Scotland to marry, but Lolita this isn't. With many a cartoonish moment, such as Robert Morley's appearing as a Judge, and a propensity - very Sixties - for freeze-frames, this never convinces, despite a few comic moments. Goodness knows what would be said if it were made now, what with the opening scene of a these mini-skirted teenage girls cycling to school and the camera forever closing in upon their pedalling thighs while Jim Dale sings a ditty on the soundtrack. As a glimpse of London and New York at the time, it is a curiosity. One cannot help but think, however, that Bronson was better suited to the shoot-'em-up side of cinema (though one must draw a veil over Breakheart Pass, which is perhaps even worse than this).

Opening with a scream in the darkness, Danger Tomorrow lights upon a young doctor and his wife who, as often in films from this time, keep to separate beds. The subsequent hour finds them them entangled by time present and time future very much at odds with what appears to be a quiet life as part of a practice in a small village. This job, as junior to Rupert Davies, comes with an extraordinarily large rent-free house (three floors) where pride of place is given to a new food mixer at which the wife conjures up a victoria sponge while the doctor works in the attic upon an antibiotic, a test-tube-and-retort task in which he is assisted by a sultry woman about whom one might have one's doubts. Add to this the wife's sister who is never slow to accept the offer of a drink, all the more so while her own husband, an Oxford don, is busy at the typewriter with his latest detective story. The first half is perhaps on the slow side, a necessary prelude to high drama. If unlikely to be acclaimed as a lost masterpiece, this small film has much going for it - including gl;impses of an era when doctors smoked pipes in the surgery and went out on their "rounds" rather than expecting patients to ring first thing in the morning in hopes of being given a slot to toil into the surgery.

That phrase could sound like an order given by one of the Marx Brothers or Basil Fawlty - but in fact it marks a pivotal moment in this drama set in 1969 Bolton, adapted by Bill Naughton from his stage play. Much of this takes place around a dinner table over which presides the strict, God-fearing James Mason, whose wife (Diana Coupland) is caught between him and the looser spirits of their four children. Among these is Susan George, whose short skirt and long legs are redolent of a changing world outside a small terraced house which, a few years earlier, would have been filmed in shadowy black and white but comes across equally well in bleached colour.

Throughout, with salty remarks along the way (we learn of a fine coat "that'll keep your knees and other bits warm"), one is kept in suspense: will all this take a tragic turn (there is a moment when one even fears for the cat). Watch it and keep guessing. Of course it is now a period piece in some ways - mini-skirts and Mini vans, as well as, of all things, a bright-yellow Land Rover involved in a notably passionate smash - but the film also turns upon eternal insecurities (and reveals that bowls games can conceal some gambling).

"I'm a doctor - and I want my sausages!" So says an impatient Geoffrey Palmer during a small but immortal role which found him take control at the cooker in the Fawlty Towers kitchen while chaos ensues elsewhere on the premises. Less know is his playing another doctor who knocks on the door with key information (heard on an early incarnation of an answering machine) while turbulent events take place during "Incident at Midnight" (1962), one of the many episodes of the Edgar Wallace Presents... series (complete with that insinutaing theme tune which was also recorded by The Shadows).

In an inspired setting, most of the action, and the sitting around, takes place in an all-night chemist's in the West End, where the white-coated dispenser on duty is none other than Warren Mitchell.

At the time, neither of these roles may have seemed worth going to the bother of getting the CV re-typed but time has vindicated them as astute character studies, vital to these 55-minute narratives. Bluff detectives in thick overcoats make their usual appearance, as do sultry women who feel no need of such garments (furs at most, shoulders soon prominent).

To say any more is unncessary except that money is involved - and a good mark of these series is that it is always to be found in an unexpected location.

This episode is a high point.

The opening scene focuses upon a staircase, down which silently treads a man, gun in hand. For all we can tell, this is a seedy lodging house whose worn carpet is about to be decorated by blood.

In fact, a door opens upon a Sunday-afternoon suburban sitting room where a Red Indian - some ten years old - gives a whoop of surprise at being caught out by his father (Patrick Holt) who, no cowboy, is in fact a features editor whose wife (Honor Blackman) is so engaged upon some sewing that she asks him to make the tea.

A task which coincides with the telephone ringing in the hallway (its then customary location): the fashion writer with whom he has had an affair the past three years, of which he now wishes the peaceful end he appears unlikely to find. In hopes of doing so, he arranges to meet her the following evening under cover of a visit to a former Army friend with whom he has racked up gambling debts.

Nothing goes to plan, not least because a key role is played by a nosey parker who delights in her party line: the telephone deserves a credit of its own, alongside all those small players, such as a bluff porter at a block of flats, who help to propel the twists of the plot. Their names mean even less now, and at the time were perhaps otherwise engaged upon repertory theatre, but without them such films would not exist.

Needless to say, events take a turn which brings in the Yard, personified by an Inspector, Valentine Dyall, an actor who could switch between good and evil with ease. How pleasing it is for those of with a taste for such films to find him in this one - along with night scenes, telephone boxes, black cars with scant regard for KEEP LEFT signs, trains whose pelting smoke is oblivious to climate change, not to mention well-stocked shelves where spirits overshadow sherry.

All this occupies but 65 minutes, no detail of which can be overlooked, and one can imagine that, within a few years, writer and director would have been obliged to stretch it out, to less effect.

This is adroit film-making which recognises that nobody - on the screen or behind it - should predominate.

"I don't slap men's faces, I slap the look on them." Not perhaps the sort of line one readily associates with Glynis Johns. In this film, made in

England in 1949, from a novel by Gerald Butler, she finds herself becoming enthralled by a man who goes by the name of Lucky and, as did Lord Lucan, he makes a living at those gaming tables which were then, unlike the Clermont Club, behind the scenes: a wooden flap pulled back before a concealed door swings open to reveal those affecting calm around a large table as the wheel spins and a rake shunts chips to and fro. Needless to say, violence simmers beneath a landscape of cocktail dresses, dinner jackets and bow ties. Much of the film takes place by night, light and shade deployed well, almost up to the standards of those American dark streets. Told in a series of flashbacks, it opens with Glynis being questioned in a hospital about a gun found at the scene - and keeps one guessing throughout. Not a pinnacle of noir, perhaps, but there is plenty to be getting on with here - not least the fruity dialogue between Glynis and the woman with whom she shares modest quarters . What used to be called risqué before the barriers came down.

The title might lead one to expect that the boat is a main player in this engaging spy drama. In fact, there is less of it than scenes in London and thereabouts as the Intelligence service seeks the key to a Nazi spy ring which, with the war just over, is trying to grasp control of atomic-bomb secrets. So much happens in this film that there is scant time to dwell on the plausibility of all the twists. As much as anything, it is all carried along by brilliant character acting: suave Robert Newton gets away with some double entendres in talking with Guy Middleton, whose moustache is a character in its own right, while a brief turn by Wildrid Hyde-White makes a taxi driver even more churlish than the trade's general reputation. Sad to say, the charming Muriel Pavlow died last year and almost comes a cropper here, in a well-depicted lodging house, until a telephone call chances to raise the alarm: indeed, it is surprising how much of the film takes place on the telephone. Great entertainment, intelligently done, with the scenes in the Dublin hotel lobby an object lesson in how to manage extras.

Take Patrick McGoohan, add a jazz club and put him behind drums; for good measure, find room for Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck and Tubby Hayes (and others), all of this being a variant on Othello: a worthy inter-racial turn by Basil Dearden who was much given to social issues, but this little-known film has flair, owing much to the editing: the pace is terrific, and the camera angles unusual. An example of jazz on film working well (which is often far from the case).

One of the many enjoyable aspects of these 50-minute dramas is that one spots an actor on the cusp of fame or taking the work on offer after earlier starring roles. In the case of disc two of series three, one is startled to find that one of the villains is none other than Michael Caine, and there is also an appearance by Murray Melvin, perhaps best known for A Taste of Honey.

This is very well done in its blending of scenes from Katherine Mansfield's life with dramatic versions of her short stories. Perhaps one needs to know something of her life to appreciate the biographical scenes (which are a shorter part of the eposodes), and it jumps over a visit to Paris - when she diverted to the Front (or, rather, close to it) for an assignation with a lover who was in the Army. This series is perhaps best watched an episode (two stories) at a time.

Lost for many years, this film has resurfaced. Although it cannot be called a hidden gem, it is diverting enough with a suave Donald Houston who has returned from Canada in hopes of picking up the thread of a wartime encounter with a pleasingly malevolent Susan Shaw whose eyes are forever trained upon the main chance.

The twist in all this is that Houston is an adept footballer, the ideal new member for a town's faltering football team - as he proves to be. His place is all the more vital as a will reveals that the team will inherit £25,000 if it gets into the third Division; should it not do so, then the money goes to a chiseller who also runs a night club (that staple scene of Fifties British thrillers).

That remains a secret (which surely goes against wills being public documents). Events move briskly. Even those without a taste for football can enjoy the fast editing of various matches (one of which takes place at Arsenal's old ground) - and marvel at the less-than-thermodynamic shorts with which players contended.

In some ways, it could be an installment in the Edgar Wallace Presents... series. As such, it is enjoyable - and makes one lament that Susan Shaw did not make it to fifty, a career undermined by grim events.

Such dialogue shows that we are in noir territory - in this case, the countryside outside San Francisco with truckloads of apples en route to a wholesale market under the thumb of a chiseller who feels affronted at being asked to pay for the produce he sells on to willing customers.

Trucking - Hell Drivers, Duel - lends itself to the movies (would that the English version of They Drive by Night would re-emerge and which inspired Graham Greene to extol its depiction of "monstrous six-wheeled lorries plunging through the rain" of the Great North Road). Thieves' Highway was adapted by A. I. Bezzarides from his novel, and a love element does not make this fruit soft in any way. On the contrary, Valentine Cortese (who appeared years later to memorable effect in Truffaut's film-about-a-film La Nuit Americaine) is an exemplar of the sultry. Sizzling are her scenes as something of a hooker sent by a vegetable wholesaler to divert an Army veteran (whose father has been handicapped by that wholesaler).

If, as the previous reviewer here suggests, it is a movie of parts that do not quite gel, that does not matter: those parts are so strong and it all moves at such a pace that one is carried along. These are ninety minutes of your life you will not get back - and be glad they were so well spent.

This is perhaps a lesser-known performance by Boris Karloff - an author set upon research - but well worth seeing as he skilfully builds up the horror as a part of fine ensemble playing which takes in such disparate, differently-lit settings as graveyards and a music hall. To say any more would be unfair. Seek it out.