The Pleasure Girls (1965)

The Pleasure Girls is a 1965 Gerry O’Hara movie and if you’re familiar with his work you’ll be guessing that these girls are not going to be getting much pleasure. In the world of Gerry O’Hara’s movies looking for pleasure (or fun or emotional fulfilment) just leads to misery so the smart thing to do is to throw yourself under a bus at the first opportunity.

This movie is an interesting antidote to the popular image of Swinging London. Swinging London was great for a tiny minority of people in the worlds of entertainment, art and fashion but for most people it was the same old grind. A desperate struggle against poverty and despair. If you tried to get ahead you’d just get knocked down and as for sex, forget it. That leads inevitably to ruin.

This was an era in which politicians and the media were constantly fretting over the evils of the “permissive society” which was about to engulf Britain in a tidal wave of immorality.

With this movie you have to bear in mind that it reflected the sexual mores of most of society at that time. Unmarried sex was something that pop stars and people on the Continent did. Nice English people didn’t do such things. The very word pleasure was a sign of behaviour of which respectable people disapproved. The Sexual Revolution had not yet filtered down to the masses.

The Pleasure Girls is centred on a group of girls living in a block of flats in London. Sally (Francesca Annis) has just arrived in London from the country, hoping to make a career for herself as a model while guarding her virginity like the Crown Jewels. She meets Keith (Ian McShane), a cheerfully irresponsible sort but basically pretty nice.

Keith would like to sleep with her but she wants him to wait, just for a little while. Just until her career is established and they have enough money to get married. It will probably only be five or six years. Surely if he loves her he won’t mind waiting such a short time.

Sally is a good girl.

Marion (Rosemary Nicols) lives with Prinny (Mark Eden) in the flat below. They’re not married so we figure Marion has some suffering in store for her. Once we get to know Prinny we’re even more sure of that - he’s a loser, a hopeless gambler and a louse. But he’s charming and Marion loves him. We have some doubts as to whether Marion is a good girl.

We have doubts about Dee (Suzanna Leigh) as well. She’s having an affair with a married man, Nikko (Klaus Kinski). She seems nice, but we suspect she might be in line for some suffering as well.

One problem with this movie is that there are too many characters which makes things a bit unfocused. Some of these characters seem like they might be important but they end up playing no significant part in the story. A bit more emphasis on the central characters would have allowed for their personalities to be a bit more fleshed out. The narrative drive is also a little weak.

Nikko is actually the most interesting character. He’s a successful hard-driving businessman whose ethical standards are loose to say the least. We assume he’s being set up as the villain of the piece but as we get to know him we discover that his business ruthlessness doesn’t reflect his true character. He doesn’t mistreat Dee. In fact he’s affectionate and gentle with her and he has a generous side. He’s really quite a nice guy.

Francesca Annis gives a solid performance but it’s a somewhat thankless part. Sally really is rather prim. Anneke Wills is charming (as she would be later in her starring role in the excellent offbeat TV series The Strange Report) in a part that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Rosemary Nicols is the standout performer among the women. In the same year this movie was released she landed the lead role in the excellent and very underrated sci-fi TV series Undermind although she is of course best known as one of the three leads in the wonderful 1969-70 Department S TV series. She manages to give Marion some real substance. At times we despair at the choices she makes but we understand those choices.

Klaus Kinski gives a very restrained performance. Yes, you read that right. Kinski giving a restrained performance. But it’s quite effective. He is able to persuade us that there’s more to Nikko than outward appearances would suggest.

Ian McShane is fine as Keith although there’s not a great deal of depth to the character.

This one is mostly worth watching for the fine performances by Rosemary Nicols and Klaus Kinski. It’s definitely an intriguing time capsule of Swinging London without the glamour. It’s worth a look.

Of the three Gerry O’Hara movies I’ve seen this is the least depressing. It’s not exactly upbeat but the sense of doom isn’t quite so relentless. Worth a look if only as a time capsule.

The BFI have released this movie in one of their Blu-Ray/DVD combo packs. The transfer is very satisfactory.

Other British movies of this era that are interesting for their bleak view of sex are All the Right Noises (1970), That Kind of Girl (1963),
Baby Love (1969), Her Private Hell (1968) and Permissive (1970).

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman stars James Mason and Ava Gardner. It is one of those movies that challenges easy genre classification. It’s certainly a romance movie, albeit an unconventional one. Is it also a fantasy movie? Whatever it is it’s strange and disturbing and very unusual.

This is a movie in which the ending is revealed right at the beginning but given people’s sensitivities about spoilers I will still try to avoid them.

This British movie takes place in Spain during the early 1930s, in the Mediterranean seaport of Esperanza. The story is mostly seen through the eyes of middle-aged literary-art historian/archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender). Pandora (Ava Gardner) is a singer, but mostly she breaks men’s hearts. Men have died for love of her. Literally died. It would be tempting to see her as a wicked temptress and her odd reactions to things lead many people to see her as a heartless bitch. Pandora is however more complicated than that.

She is a very complicated woman indeed. She has never loved a man but she is in love with love. She is also perhaps in love with death.

Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) is in love with her. He is a racing car driver. He has built a car with which he hopes to break the world land speed record. His car means more to him than anything else in the world, except for Pandora.

Then a yacht arrives in the harbour. Pandora does what any normal woman would do. She takes off all her clothes and swims out to the yacht. She hasn’t been invited but is it likely that anyone will be annoyed to have a nude Ava Gardner suddenly emerge from the sea?

The strange thing is that there is no crew. Just the yacht’s skipper, a Dutchman named Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason). Hendrick is just completing a portrait of Pandora although he has never set eyes on her before. He almost seemed to be expecting her arrival, which is of course impossible.

Coincidentally Geoffrey has just come across a manuscript written in 17th century Dutch purporting to be the memoirs of the fabled Flying Dutchman. He can read Dutch but he is having trouble with this archaic form of the language. Oddly enough Hendrick can read it with ease. In fact it’s as if he doesn’t need to read it. He already knows what it contains. Which is impossible.

Geoffrey knows that Hendrick cannot possibly be the Flying Dutchman. That’s just a legend. But he is puzzled and disturbed.

Pandora accepts Stephen’s proposal of marriage. Stephen does have a rival, matador Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré).

With Hendrick’s arrival there may be another rival on the scene. The attraction between Hendrick and Pandora is obvious, but it’s a mysterious sort of attraction. It’s as if they both have a destiny they cannot escape.

James Mason is excellent as the troubled rather tragic Hendrick, and playing troubled tragic romantic leads was certainly something Mason did well.

This picture however belongs to Ava Gardner. Hers is the standout performance and Pandora is the most interesting character. She perfectly captures the disturbing quality of Pandora. She is clearly attracted to men who flirt with death, such as racing car drivers and matadors. Whenever one of these men is in danger of sudden violent death Pandora is visibly excited. It’s obviously sexual excitement, but perhaps more than that.

There’s a wonderful scene early on in which she asks Stephen to make a sacrifice for her, a very big sacrifice. She doesn’t love the man. It is simply a test of the strength of his love. Or perhaps it is a test of the power of love. This is in fact the theme of the whole movie - how much will a person give up for love? Stephen makes the sacrifice. Pandora’s reaction is orgasmic. The scene is charged with dangerous unhealthy obsessive eroticism. Gardner handles it superbly. She makes her excitement obvious without being crass.

Do not get the idea that Pandora is evil or a femme fatale. It’s not that simple. She is the woman she is. She is perhaps driven by fate. She is driven by the need for love, and it has to be overwhelming love. She never loses our sympathy. We are unsettled by her, but fascinated.

Jack Cardiff did the cinematography which is, as you would expect, magnificent. He really brings out the feline quality in Ava Gardner.

The big question of course is whether there is really anything supernatural going on. Is Hendrick really the Flying Dutchman? That question is answered but obviously I’m not going to reveal the answer.

This is an insanely romantic love story but it’s a movie about death and fate as well as love.

This is a strange but brilliant movie. Very highly recommended.

The Screenbound Blu-Ray is barebones but looks pretty good.

To Have and to Hold (1963)

To Have and to Hold is a 1963 entry in the Merton Park cycle of British Edgar Wallace B-movies. This one was scripted by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Herbert Wise.

Sergeant Fraser (Ray Barrett) is an ordinary cop, a detective. He’s given a very easy job to do - to convince a woman that her ex is not really intending to murder her. But Claudia (Katharine Blake) sounds so convincing and she’s clearly genuinely frightened. Fraser allows her to persuade him to stay for dinner. They agree to meet for lunch the next day.

Fraser hasn’t done anything seriously wrong but taking the risk of becoming personally involved in a case like this is perhaps a little unwise.

Fraser had no intention of getting personally involved at all but sometimes a man meets a woman and he just gets drawn into things. He’s not even sure why Claudia fascinates him. She is charming but perhaps it’s something else. Perhaps its’s just a natural masculine reaction - a frightened woman who may be in danger and he starts to feel protective.

The involvement proves to have been very unwise. This was not such a trivial routine matter after all. And Fraser is in the middle of it and his life is getting just a bit out of control.

Then the plot twists start to kick in. Fraser is really in a muddle now. He thinks he knows what is going on but he is personally involved and he could be totally wrong.

His boss, Detective Inspector Roberts (William Hartnell), isn’t overly pleased with him. Roberts believes Fraser is a good cop and he doesn’t want to see the younger man doing anything to wreck his career.

Fraser also has Lucy (Patricia Bredin) to consider. Lucy is his girlfriend, or was his girlfriend and maybe still is.

Jimmy Sangster was always a reliable writer and he’s come up with a very solid screenplay here. Herbert Wise was already an experienced television director and while the low budgets on these Edgar Wallace movies didn’t allow much scope for doing anything fancy he shows himself to be perfectly competent.

Australian actor Ray Barrett was always worth watching and he gives an effective low-key performance here, doing just enough to let us know that Fraser is confused and upset and that his judgment might not be as sound as usual.

Katharine Blake is fine as the woman.

William Hartnell is as always a delight. His inspector is not quite the usual crusty bad-tempered old cop with a heart of gold. Right from the start his attitude towards Fraser is more that of an indulgent uncle. Barrett and Hartnell are terrific in their scenes together.

The one weakness is that the script glosses over a couple of points and that ends up stretching credibility just a little. I found myself mystified that these things were left hanging.

On the whole though it’s enjoyable and nicely twisted.

As usual it’s widescreen black-and-white, a format of which I’m quite fond.

This is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Collection Volume 5 DVD boxed set. And as usual the transfer is excellent.

Act of Murder (1964)

Act of Murder is a late (1964) entry in the British Merton Park Studios Edgar Wallace B-movie cycle.

The film plunges us straight into a romantic triangle. Actress Anne Longman (Justine Lord) quit the theatre to marry Ralph Longman (Anthony Bate). This did not please Tim Ford (John Carson). But given that Ralph is charming, civilised and rich and Tim is a whiny loser actor she probably made the sensible choice.

Anne and Ralph live in a farmhouse in the country. They are planning a holiday. They are going to swap houses with a very nice middle-aged couple in London. They’re looking forward to a couple of weeks in a luxury London flat.

The plot twists start early in this movie and they keep coming, and they’re clever and unexpected. Which means I’m not going to tell you anything at all about the plot, other than the fact that there are lots of things that are not what they seem.

Lewis Davidson’s screenplay really is impressive.

At first the plot twists are just odd and puzzling. Then they become creepy and disturbing.

We know that someone has some kind of devious plan but we have no idea which of the main characters that someone might be.

There’s a mystery here but we’re also in psychological thriller territory.

We can think of an obvious solution to part of the mystery but that leaves some nagging questions unanswered.

The paranoia level slowly builds.

Like most of the directors involved in this cycle of films Alan Bridges worked mostly in television but he did a few feature films including the rather good slightly offbeat 1966 science fiction movie Invasion. He does a pretty nice job here. Act of Murder has just a bit more style and polish than you expect in a low-budget movie, with interesting camera angles and a few welcome visual flourishes.

Anthony Bate and John Carson were always reliable actors and they’re both very good here, as is Justine Lord. All three leads manage to be ambiguous, which is exactly as it should be. None of them play their roles as obvious villains, but they don’t play them as paragons of virtue either. All the characters, including the minor characters, are to some degree morally compromised.

I don’t think any of these Edgar Wallace B-movies could possibly be described as film noir but this one does perhaps have just the faintest noir tinge.

There’s also an almost-nude scene which was about as daring as you could be in Britain in 1964. There’s definitely plenty of sexual tension.

Act of Murder is a very well-crafted above-average crime melodrama B-movie with a pleasingly hard-edged nasty streak to it. Highly recommended.

Act of Murder is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries volume 6 DVD boxed set. These wonderful boxed sets are unfortunately becoming a bit hard to find now but if you come across them grab them. The 16:9 enhanced transfer (these movies were all shot in black-and-white and widescreen) is very nice.

We Shall See (1964)

We Shall See is a 1964 entry in the British Merton Park cycle of Edgar Wallace thrillers.

Evan Collins (Maurice Kaufmann) is an ex-RAF officer and now an airline pilot. His marriage to Alva (Faith Brook) is stormy to say the least. She is determined to persuade him to give up flying and she taunts him as a failure. There’s lots of tension between them.

They live in a house in the country. The staff comprises Ludo (Alec Mango), an old family retainer, and Ludo’s pretty young niece Jirina (Talitha Pol).

Alva has a brother, Greg (Alex MacIntosh). There’s tension between brother and sister. Alva cheated Greg out of an inheritance. Greg still has hopes of getting his share.

Alva is an evil, bad-tempered, childish, manipulative, selfish and cruel woman. She’s also crazy and paranoid. Seriously crazy. She’s spent time in a mental hospital but Evan doesn’t know this.

Greg is having an affair with Jirina. That’s their business, except that Alva would like to make it her business. She’d like to wreck things for them out of sheer mean-spiritedness.

Things get more tense when Evan has a car accident. He will recover but it will take time. Alva becomes convinced that Evan is having an affair with Rosemary (Bridget Armstrong), a pretty nurse at the hospital. Alva is out to get Rosemary.

Alva sees conspiracies everywhere. She thinks everybody hates her. In fact she has given everybody who comes in contact with her plenty of reasons to hate her.

That car accident has led to a minor court case for careless driving but Alva sees her opportunity to wreck Evan’s career by claiming he was drunk. That would cost him his job at the airline.

Alva is also out to get Ludo. She wants him evicted. He has lived in that house for decades. It is his home. Again Alva’s motive is sheer nastiness. Ludo keeps bees. Alva hates bees. Therefore Alva hates Ludo.

There’s clearly plenty of potential here for real trouble, such as murder. There are plenty of people with motives that might well lead them to commit murder.

Naturally trouble does come, but it comes with an unexpected twist. We have a pretty fair idea of what’s happened and how and why it happened but the identity of the person responsible remains uncertain.

The actual solution is something of a surprise. There were plenty of obvious endings that would have been in tune with audience expectations in 1964 but scriptwriter Donal Giltinan rather daringly goes for something less obvious that the audience would not have expected.

In fact all the way through Giltinan takes a subtly unconventional approach. The screenplay includes many of the clichés of the genre but they don’t play out in clichéd ways.

There are no big stars here but all of the performances are very solid. Faith Brooks overacts outrageously as Alva but it’s a part that demands an over-the-top approach. It’s a tricky rôle - Alva is evil but she’s also insane and we have to feel at least some pity for her.

Everything revolves around Alva so it’s appropriate that Brooks’ performance should dominate the movie. The other characters are puppets dancing to her tune so it’s also appropriate that the other performances should be much more low-key.

Like most of the directors of films in this series Quentin Lawrence spent most of his career in television. He might be an inspired director but he keeps the action moving along.

We Shall See is an unassuming low-key little movie that turns out to be more interesting than the viewer would have expected. I enjoyed it. It’s just quirky enough to earn a highly recommended rating.

This movie is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume 6 DVD boxed set. There are no extras but the transfer (the film was shot widescreen and black-and-white) is excellent.

Carry On Loving (1970)

Carry On Loving, released in 1970, was the 20th movie in the Carry On series. There are those who feel that it’s a bit more risqué than previous Carry Ons. Perhaps it is, just a little. There are also those who feel that the series was starting to become a bit stale by this time, an opinion with which I strongly disagree.


This entry in the cycle features most of the much-loved series regulars.

This time the subject is marriage. Mr and Mrs Sidney Bliss (Sid James and Hattie Jacques) run the Wedded Bliss Marriage Bureau, a computerised dating service which is rather less high-tech than it appears to be. Mrs Bliss suspects that her husband is sampling the female merchandise, keeping the most desirable ladies for himself. In particular she thinks he’s having it off with Esme Crowfoot (Joan Sims).

She hires a thoroughly inept private eye (played by Charles Hawtrey) to find out just what Sid is up to.

Mr Snooper (Kenneth Williams) has his own problems. He’s a marriage guidance counsellor but he’s not married and he’s been told he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t acquire a wife pronto. He turns to the Wedded Bliss agency for help.

There are all the misunderstandings you’d expect in a Carry On movie. Shy young virgin Bertrum Muffet (Richard O’Callaghan) is set up to meet Esme Crowfoot but he ends up meeting a photographic pin-up model instead. He has no idea she is a model and is shocked when she immediately wants to take her clothes off.

This is the second date the agency has arranged for him. The first one ended disastrously, landing him in the midst of an incredibly gloomy and crazy family.

The great thing about the Carry Ons is that even when you know exactly where a scene is heading it’s still funny. In fact the anticipation makes it funnier. And this is a very funny Carry On movie.


Everyone is in fine form. Sid James is sneaky and lecherous, Hattie Jacques is a bit of a dragon, Kenneth Williams is the world’s worst marriage guidance counsellor. Bernard Bresslaw has great fun as Esme’s terrifying wrestler ex-boyfriend Gripper Burke. Joan Sims, Terry Scott and Charles Hawtrey are as reliable as ever. Newcomer Richard O’Callaghan plays a role that in previous movies would certainly have gone to Jim Dale but he does a fine job as a good-natured innocent.

This movie takes the same irreverent attitude towards marriage that the Carry Ons took towards everything else. Irreverent, but not hostile. The Carry Ons had no political barrow to push, which is why they’re so refreshing to watch today. The aim is to provide laughs, and Talbot Rothwell’s script provides plenty of those.

By this time the Carry On franchise was humming along like a well-oiled machine. Everybody, from director Gerald Thomas down to the humblest crew member or bit-part actor, knew what to do and how to do it. These were very modestly budgeted moves but very professionally made.

There’s a vast amount of sexual innuendo, all of it good-natured. Men are made fun of, and so are women. Authority figures are regarded with a certain scepticism.

Critics never had much love for the Carry On movies which committed the cardinal sin of being immensely popular with ordinary audiences. The opinions of the critics were irrelevant. Carry On Loving did very nicely at the box office.

Carry On Loving is naughty (in an innocent wort of way) and it’s funny. Highly recommended.

This movie is part of the Carry On Collection DVD boxed set. It gets a good 16:9 enhanced transfer with quite a few extras. Jacki Piper joins Richard O’Callaghan for an amusing audio commentary. They both have very happy memories of working on this movie.

I’ve reviewed lots of the Carry On movies including my personal favourite Carry On Cleo (1964), Don't Lose Your Head (1966), Carry On Henry (1971) and the unfairly maligned Carry On Emmannuelle (1978).

The Spider and the Fly (1949)

The Spider and the Fly is a 1949 British crime thriller directed by Robert Hamer.

The setting is France in 1913, the last days of La Belle Epoque. Fernand Maubert (Eric Portman) is a senior police detective and he’s a man wth an obsession. That obsession is Philippe de Ledocq (Guy Rolfe), a brilliant criminal. Maubert is convinced that Philippe has been behind a series of daring robberies but somehow Philippe always has an unbreakable alibi.

After a recent bank robbery Maubert did manage to detain Philippe’s accomplice, the very pretty Madeleine Saincaize (Nadia Gray). Madeleine is Philippe’s mistress. Maubert had no real evidence against her. He had hoped that she might betray Philippe but Madeleine is hopelessly in love with the master criminal.

Maubert and Philippe are on quite friendly terms. In fact the two men like each other. Maubert disapproves of criminals and is therefore determined to convict Philippe but mostly what annoys Maubert is that Philippe was born into privilege and power. Maubert cannot understand why such a man would betray his family and his upbringing and turn to crime.

Philippe likes and admires Maubert as a man but he strongly disapproves of policemen.

The first two-thirds of the movie is a cat-and-mouse game between Maubert and Philippe. Philippe is clever but Maubert is dogged.

Madeleine provides a complication. She has been Philippe’s mistress but Maubert is falling for her. Maubert is also hoping to use her in order to trap Philippe, so Maubert’s motivations are rather murky.

Then the movie switches gears and becomes a slightly different (and in my opinion less satisfactory) kind of movie but I can’t say any more without revealing spoilers.

We’re presumably expected to see Maubert as a noble dedicated policeman and that’s certainly how he sees himself. I’m afraid that to me he came across as smug and self-righteous, and not at all honourable. Maybe I’m just not so tolerant of policemen using lies and emotional manipulation to achieve their ends.

Eric Portman’s performance is solid enough but he was unable to persuade me to feel any sympathy at all for his character.

Guy Rolfe is much much better as Philippe - charming and not particularly trustworthy, a likeable rogue. Rolfe is able to make a somewhat over-the-top character fairly believable.

Nadia Gray is fine although in some respects Robert Westerby’s script did her no favours.

George Cole as a detective makes a reasonably effective sidekick to Maubert.

The surprise ending really does come as a surprise but I felt that it came out of left field and was contrived and unconvincing. It required the characters to behave in ways that seemed to me to be inconsistent with what we had earlier learnt about their personalities. But perhaps it’s an ending that would appealed to audiences in 1949. There’s also an epilogue which I detested but I imagine audiences in 1949 would have lapped it up.

Robert Hamer as director does a perfectly competent job with a couple of effective suspense scenes.

The movie was of course shot in black-and-white.

The Spider and the Fly is enjoyable enough and it’s worth a look.

This movie is a bit hard to find but there is an Italian DVD which offers the original English soundtrack as an option and the transfer is satisfactory if less than pristine.

Piccadilly (1929)

Piccadilly is a 1929 British silent melodrama directed by Ewald André Dupont and is perhaps best known as one of the most acclaimed movies made by its star, Anna May Wong. Arnold Bennett, a major literary figure in Britain at the time, wrote the story.

German-born Dupont started his film career as a screenwriter and later director in Germany. He relocated briefly to the United States and then again to Britain where he enjoyed considerable success in the late 1920s. He then tried Hollywood again, with very little success. Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly, both made in Britain, represented the peak of his career. Piccadilly was a very expensive production and it shows.

Valentine Wilmot (Jameson Thomas) runs the fashionable Piccadilly Club. His headliners are Vic (Cyril Ritchard) and Mabel (Gilda Gray). Mabel is Wilmot’s mistress but Vic has been increasingly overt in his attempts to steal Mabel away from him. The exasperated Wilmot gives Vic his marching orders.

Unfortunately Mabel on her own is not enough to draw in the customers. The Piccadilly Club is struggling and Wilmot is desperate. Then he remembers seeing pretty Chinese scullery maid Shosho (Anna May Wong) dancing in the scullery. He gets her to dance for him and he decides on a colossal gamble. He will attempt to turn Shosho into London’s newest dancing star. Mabel is amused. She is sure that the customers will laugh at Shosho. But they don’t. Her exotic and sensual Chinese dance is a sensation. To be honest she’s not the world’s greatest dancer but she is most definitely sexy. Shosho is soon the toast of London.

Mabel is somewhat jealous of Shoho’s success but the big problem is that Mabel thinks Shosho is trying to steal Wilmot from her. And that is indeed exactly what Shosho is trying to do. Mabel is very upset to say the least. Se reacts the way you would expect a woman to react when faced by a much younger romantic rival.

An added complication is a Chinese boy named Jim. The exact nature of his relationship with Shosho is obscure but he certainly acts as if Shosho belongs to him. He is clearly very jealous.

These romantic and sexual dramas end with a gunshot. We then get a courtroom scene in which various accounts of the events leading up to that gunshot are presented by different witnesses.

It’s pure romantic melodrama but there’s nothing wrong with that. The plot starts to drift a bit towards the end and the climactic courtroom scene is a dreary anticlimax. Courtroom scenes are incredibly difficult to pull off successfully and since by their very nature they’re intensely dialogue-driven they can fall very flat in silent movies.

The acting on the whole is extremely good without any of the exaggerated and histrionic gestures which people often associate with silent films.

Which brings us to Anna May Wong. I’ve seen a few of her talkies and I’ve been underwhelmed by her performances. She did certainly have several things going for her. The camera loved her. She had a definite screen presence. She could be amazingly glamorous and rather sexy. But I’ve always felt that there was something missing. Her performances are just a bit lifeless and her line delivery in talkies is a bit flat.

Seeing her in Piccadilly was a revelation. She really is excellent here. She seemed to be a much much better actress in silent films. She seems more confident than in her talkies and she’s much more lively and vivacious. And she really understood the art of silent film acting.

Shosho is intriguingly ambiguous. We’re not really sure how she actually feels about Wilmot. Does she love him or is she a bit of a schemer?

This movie does try to grapple with racial issues, sometimes clumsily, sometimes more subtly. The plot is however driven mostly by plain old-fashioned sexual jealousy.

This is a very stylish and visually arresting movie. The sets and costumes are lavish. Dupont’s framing of shots is consistently interesting without ever seeming gimmicky or intrusive.

Intriguingly the poster promises us topless dancing from Anna May Wong but we never get to see any. Perhaps some scenes were cut. Perhaps the poster artist just got over-excited. Perhaps British International Pictures figured that the poster would boost the box office.

The BFI’s DVD release looks lovely and best of all they’ve found a print that preserves the original tinting. Not everyone likes tinting but I love it and it’s one of the distinctive things that add to the charm of silent cinema. Apparently it’s accompanied by a newly commissioned score but I can’t comment of the score because I didn’t listen to it. I strongly disapprove of modern scores for silent movies and when I’m unlucky enough to encounter one I always turn the volume down to zero.

Piccadilly is a pretty good movie, it has style and it boasts a very fine performance by Anna May Wong. Highly recommended.

Kill Me Tomorrow (1957)

In the early to mid 1950s Terence Fisher directed a huge number of cheap B-movies, mostly crime movies and many of them for a company called Hammer Films. Kill Me Tomorrow (which was not a Hammer production) was to be the last such movie Fisher directed. In the very same month that this movie was released Fisher would hit the big time with The Curse of Frankenstein.

Fisher in fact had quite a flair for making these cheap crime features.

Pat O’Brien plays Bart Crosbie, a hardbitten crime reporter for the Clarion newspaper. Crosbie had been an ace reporter but a year earlier his wife had died. She was killed in a car accident and Bart Crosbie was driving. His response to the tragedy was to crawl inside a bottle and wallow in self-pity.

He’s become irresponsible and unreliable and he’s constantly on the verge of being sacked by his editor, Brook (Ronald Adam). Most people have written Crosbie off, but his old friend Steve Ryan (Robert Brown) and Brook’s niece Jill (Lois Maxwell) still retain some belief in him.

And now his son, the only thing he has left in the world, is desperately ill and may die. Crosbie needs a thousand pounds for an operation to save the boy and of course he doesn’t have the money. Then fate steps in. There is a murder. The murder is linked to a big story the Clarion is about to break, a story on a smuggling racket. That murder might provide a way for Crosbie to get that money although it’s a desperate chance. It could mean taking the rap for a murder he didn’t commit.

The police now have a prime suspect and a confession.

Steve Ryan has a hunch that the whole murder case doesn’t add up but that’s all it is, a hunch. Jill Brook has her doubts as well. The police are perplexed.

Crosbie gets into an awkward situation with the man behind that murder and with the police. His problem with the police is convincing them that he’s a murderer when he isn’t.

Jill Brook tries to help. Jill is a sensible girl but because Crosbie hasn’t told her everything she’s likely to make things more difficult and more confused.

50s pop sensation Tommy Steele pops up briefly to sing a rock’n’roll song, this being presumably an attempt to attract the youth market. He just happens to be the featured act at a coffee bar run by the chief bad guy.

The plot is rather predictable but the movie is well-paced.

Pat O’Brien is fine although he was pushing sixty at the time and is just a little lacking in energy, and he gets some action scenes which stretch credibility a mite.

Lois Maxwell makes a likeable feisty girl reporter.

You might think 58-year-old Pat O’Brien and 29-year-old Lois Maxwell make an unlikely romantic pairing but it works better than you might expect. Their mutual attraction comes across as quite believable.

This movie is included in the VCI four-movie DVD set called British Cinema: Drama volume 3 although the transfer bears the Renown Pictures logo.

Kill Me Tomorrow suffers from a predictable script but it’s well-made and Fisher was always a very competent director even when (as here) he was obviously working on a very very low budget. It’s not a great movie but it’s moderately entertaining and worth a look if you love British B-movies.

If you want to see some really great Terence Fisher crime B-movies check out Stolen Face and Man Bait (both Hammer movies).

Accidental Death (1963)

Accidental Death is a late entry in the British Merton Park Edgar Wallace cycle of crime thrillers. These were released theatrically in Britain (as supporting features) and were screened on television in the US as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre.

These movies were only very loosely based on Edgar Wallace stories. Very loosely indeed.

Johnnie Paxton (Richard Vernon) lives in a rather palatial home and is clearly not short of money. He had been a war hero, serving in one of those hush-hush outfits operating behind enemy lines. He lives with Henriette (Jacqueline Ellis). He raised her after her parents were killed by the Gestapo. She’s not actually his adoptive daughter in a legal sense but in practice they have a father-daughter relationship. Henriette’s parents saved Paxton’s life during the war so raising Henriette was in the nature of discharging a debt.

Henriette has a boyfriend, a rather jealous young man named Alan (Derrick Sherwin).

Things start to get tense when Paul Lanson (John Carson) suddenly shows up. Paul had fought with the French Resistance during the war. He and Paxton are old comrades. Paul seems a bit edgy. His behaviour is generally odd.

Then Paul tells Paxton the reason for his surprise visit. He intends to kill Paxton. He believes that Paxton betrayed a number of Resistance fighters, including Henriette’s parents.

That immediately sets up a tense situation but there’s another factor to add to the tension - he developing romantic triangle between Henriette, Paul and Alan.

The viewer has no way of knowing if there is any substance to Paul’s accusations. Paxton’s reaction could indicate either guilt or innocence. We don’t really know what to make of him. Is he a hero or a villain?

And of course we don’t know what to make of Paxton either. He might also be either a hero or a villain.

To add a bit more spice, we know that Paul has a gun.

The ending is quite clever and original and suspenseful.

Richard Vernon is one of my favourite British character actors of this era and he’s excellent, and nicely ambiguous, here. John Carson is good although I’m not sold on his French accent. He does manage to make us very unsettled, with Paul at times seeming slightly creepy and at times seeming perhaps a trifle unstable, but he doesn’t over do it. We still believe that it’s possible that Paul is the good guy.

Derrick Sherwin and Jacqueline Ellis are fine.

Geoffrey Nethercott was the director of Accidental Death (and of another entry in this cycle, Who was Maddox?) and he does a competent job. In common with most of the directors of these Edgar Wallace movies he spent the vast majority of his career working in television.

Arthur La Bern wrote the script, and wrote a couple of other Wallace films including Time to Remember (1962) and The Verdict (1964). More notably, he wrote Frenzy for Alfred Hitchcock.

These movies were all shot in widescreen and in black-and-white.

This movie is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries volume 5 DVD boxed set. The 16:9 enhanced transfer is what we expect from Network it’s excellent. There are no extras.

Accidental Death is not one of the best movies in this series and there are some far-fetched elements in the plot but it’s enjoyable and it has a few oddball touches that do give it an Edgar Wallace flavour. Recommended.