Rent Girl in the Headlines (1963)

Interesting Old Sixties Effort - Girl in the Headlines review by Cato

It's good to watch these old British efforts from the past, quite a few of them B films in the days when we got two films in our afternoon at The Odeon, often with only a few of us in the audience. This one is an interesting crime thriller, and in its way was a noble effort with some good actors giving their best. This one's got Ian Hendry, Jeremy (Sherlock Holmes) Brett, and Ronald Fraser in it, and it's a valiant effort, with a rather OTT and unlikely plot , ending with a very surprising murderer, that nobody would have suspected. Never mind, it's a good nostalgic look at old British cinema in the days when we didn't watch so much TV to get our thrills.

On and off the River - Girl in the Headlines review by CH

Suffused with the atmosphere of Profumo, Girl in the Headlines is another louche world in which upper and lower classes mingle in a world of sex and crime. All is galvanished by the opening scene which finds Chief Inspector Ian Hendry and beritable sidekick Superintendent Ronald Fraser beside the body of a model in a flat below the smart one belonging to a suave television actor played by James Villiers, who is a suspect in a tangled plot which finds room for Peter Arne as a rebarbtrive artist and Jeremy Brett as his ne'er-do-well brother. Few, come to that, have the attar of roses about them - an exception being Jane Asher as the teenage daughter of the Inspector, a man given to driving a Jag and enjoying opera, which certainly pioneered a detective trait.

Adapted from a novel by actor Laurence Payne (himself always worth watching), it is essentially based on drug dealing,. The ninety minutes go by not so much with increasing suspense but a succession of scenes which play well, such as a surprise appearance by a gay club in a stark basement (there had been no suggestion that this would form part of the plot).

A time, a place - when London was less crowded and the river acrive -, all is caught well by a well-directed cast: unfamilar names are as effective as the others. And nothing prepares one for the Gothic memorial to an opera singer who has lost her voice, a surreal diversion from the heightened reality of a film which should be better known.