The Bride Wore Black - 1968 film review

The Bride Wore Black is a movie from 1968 directed by Francois Truffaut, and based on the novel by William Irish (that is how he is credited, but this was a pen-name for Cornell Woolrich). The book is one I rather like and was one of the first books for which I ever wrote an introduction, when it was reprinted by Chivers in the late, lamented Black Dagger series way back in 1992. (Suffice to say that, at that time, I had absolutely no idea of how many book intros I would go on to write - if anyone had told me, I'd probably have fainted at the prospect...)

This is a stylish film, a point underlined by the fact that the costumes are by Pierre Cardin. The soundtrack was written by the great Bernard Herrmann, a very clear signal of Truffaut's' admiration for the work of Alfred Hitchcock. And the eponymous bride (here called Julie Kohler - in the book she is Julie Killeen) is played by the super-stylish Jeanne Moreau.

How much substance this version of the story has is a different matter. This is a combination of serial killer story and revenge thriller, and Truffaut doesn't bother too much with mystification. He is more concerned with charting Julie's single-minded quest for vengeance. But this raises some questions that, to my regret, he doesn't attempt to answer.

Above all, how did Julie get on to the track of her victims? For me, explaining this should be an important part of the story. But Truffaut doesn't bother. His focus is on the visual, which is fair enough for a film-maker, but I do think that, when telling a story like this, it's a good plan to do everything possible to encourage the viewer to suspend disbelief and, ideally, to encourage a degree of identification with the protagonist, even if they are up to no good. I felt that Truffaut - and Moreau - kept me at a distance. A deliberate choice, I'm sure, but although the film is a good one, it does have some shortcomings and isn't quite up to the standard of the source novel.  

Melissa - 1964 TV review

Melissa is perhaps the most famous of all the many TV serials written by Francis Durbridge. I've seen two versions of it, both remakes, one from the 1970s (good) and one written by the talented Alan Bleasdale (poor) and I've also read the book of the show, My Wife Melissa. But until recently, I'd never seen the original series, which dates from 1964.

I've now repaired that omission, and I enjoyed doing so. This is a six-part series, but since each episode is only 25 minutes long, it never outstays its welcome. And it is very rich in plot development (character development? not so much). All Durbridge's strengths, as well as some of his weaknesses, are on display here. Above all, the regular cliff-hangers are very cunningly contrived.

Tony Britton gives a solid, low-key performance as Guy Foster, a struggling writer whose marriage to the glamorous Melissa (Petra Davies) is fraying at the edges. The first of many shocks that he receives comes with the news that Melissa has been murdered, after attending a party with their friends the Hepburns and racing driver Don Page. Chief Inspector Carter investigates, and Brian Wilde is marvellously impish as the softly-spoken cop. 

When a doctor and his secretary insist that Foster has been seeking medical help - something he vehemently denies - the plot really starts to thicken. A mysterious note that suggests Melissa was involved with someone called Peter Antrobus causes Foster to go in search of Antrobus, only to discover that Peter is actually a twelve-year-old boy. It's all very baffling. But Carter gets to the bottom of it, and I can see why this show was such a hit in its day. Yes, there are lots of cliches, but there's also a good deal of entertainment to be had. To write a TV serial that is remade twice and spawns a novel is quite something, and the simple secret of Melissa's success is that Durbridge never lets the pace slacken for a moment. There's a lesson there for modern TV writers. 

 

Forgotten Book - The Pretty Ones

Dorothy Eden was a New Zealander who made her home in England in order to develop her career as a writer. It turned out to be a good move, as she became a bestselling author, primarily in the field of Gothic thrillers with a romantic streak. She strikes me as a sort of literary descendant of Ethel Lina White and Daphne du Maurier. There's no doubt that she ranks as a crime writer - she was an active figure in the CWA and elected to membership of the Detection Club in 1959.

The latter honour came two years after she published The Pretty Ones, which is very much in the Rebecca tradition. Emma, the protagonist, is one of those young women - appealing but not regarded as beautiful - who marries a handsome, rather mysterious man after a whirlwind romance and without getting to know him properly, let alone finding out much about his past. I find this pretty crazy behaviour, but I tried to overcome my prejudice when reading the story!

Emma's new husband is Barnaby, a successful writer of detective novels (though we learn next to nothing about his work, which I found disappointing - a missed opportunity, really). She discovers that he has been married before, to Josephine, but Josephine has not been seen by anyone for months, and Emma finds herself looking after the two 'difficult' young daughters that Josephine has abandoned.

This is a 'whowasdunin' story, with a body discovered on page one - we don't discover the corpse's identity until towards the end of the book. Does the corpse belong to Josephine or someone else? I found this a very readable story, although I have to say that I figured out what was going on, and who was responsible, after only about fifty pages. Not a masterpiece, then, but interesting enough for me to be tempted to read more of Eden's work.

 

The Brighton Strangler - 1945 film review

Brighton has been the setting for a number of excellent crime stories. Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and Patrick Hamilton's The West Pier are notable examples. In recent years, for instance, we've had books set in the resort by Peter James and Peter Guttridge, among others. There's something about the place that seems to spark the imagination of writers. And then there's a rather obscure wartime film called The Brighton Strangler, which I stumbled across on Youtube.

The film is a curiosity. I think it's reasonable to describe it as a film noir, but oddly, it's not a British film noir. It was made in the United States by RKO and directed by Max Nosseck, who had fled to the States from Germany. He had some input into the script, written by Hugh Gray and Arnold Phillips, while the stars of the movie were John Loder and June Duprez. No stellar names there, to be honest.

This is a short film which seems to have made little impact on its original release, but in recent years it has enjoyed something of a revival. One of its merits is that its brevity (67 minutes) mean that the story moves at a fast pace. And there's quite a lot going on. The cleverest part of the whole script comes at the beginning, when a melodramatic murder is committed - and then we realise that it's the climax of a play in the theatre. However, the play is running during the Blitz, and when the theatre is bombed, the lead actor (Loder) suffers a head injury. Affected by amnesia, he becomes a killer, following the pattern of the character in the play...

The scriptwriters were no Graham Greenes and it's not too difficult to find fault with the film. The fact it was shot in America does mean that we don't get any meaningful sense of Brighton at all. I wasn't impressed with Loder's acting, I'm afraid, whereas June Duprez makes the best of an under-written role and Miles Mander is good as the lead detective. But when a film is as short as this, and packed with incident, it probably makes for better entertainment than one of those interminable six or eight or ten part TV serials where the plot material is padded out for purely commercial reasons. And there's room in the world for intriguing curiosities.

Nightsleeper - BBC TV review

Nightsleeper is a BBC TV thriller that has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, it's one of those six-part stories that really should have been two or three parts long. There's a lot of padding and in the end this significantly diminishes the impact of the story. A pity, but it's characteristic of an age when television economics dictate that storylines need to be stretched out long enough to justify the investment in a costly production. 

The story is about the mysterious cyber-hijacking of the Heart of Britain, a high-speed train heading from Glasgow to London. It's hurtling along the railway tracks of the country towards imminent destruction. Where are those leaves on the line and the wrong kind of snow when you need them? The dramatic events on board the train are counter-pointed with innumerable scenes in cybersecurity HQ, where Alexander Roach is leading the attempts to save the passengers, while being generally obstructed by colleagues and superiors, partly because of her determination to involve her chum Pev (David Threlfall, at his maverick best), who is something of a black sheep in the cybercommunity. Suffice to say that the scenes on the train are much more gripping.

The passengers on the train are, naturally, a varied assortment, ranging from a stereotyped right-wing bigot to a small boy who has been separated from his mother, and a host of individuals may not be all they seem. For good measure, the Minister of Transport is on board, and no opportunity is lost in the script to mock her hopelessness.

Joe Cole is the disgraced cop who tries to save the train and strikes up an unlikely rapport with Alexandra Roach in the course of innumerable telephone calls. There are some thrilling moments, but this is really a two-scene storyline that never needed six hours to unfold. A shame, because there are plenty of signs that it could have been so much better.

Forgotten Book - The Ellerby Case

The Ellerby Case was the third novel by John Rhode to feature Dr Priestley. The book was published in 1927 and it showed Rhode's ability as a crime writer, even though he was still finding his way. For instance, this novel is narrated by Priestley's secretary Harold Merefield, a narrative device Rhode had used in the previous book but then abandoned (just as Rhode abandoned Priestley's daughter April, whose romance with Harold was a feature of the great man's first case). At one point, the detective's initials are given as 'J.P.', which is odd, given that we'd been told previously (and would be told again subsequently) that Priestley's first name was Lancelot. But that's the trouble with writing a series. It's so easy to forget what one has said about one's characters. Believe me, I know!

In this novel, Priestley celebrates his 58th birthday and is a little more human and less cantankerous and irritating than in some of his appearances. He is also pretty active, though his interventions come at a cost. When the villain realises Priestley is on his trail, he tries to dispose of him. There's one good scene involving the tidal bore on the River Trent (and the bore, or eagre, does exist), and another incident involves a hedgehog with poisonous green spines (which is rather less authentic, to say the very least). Michael Delving's Bored to Death (1975) incidentally, also involves a dangerous tidal bore, this time on the Severn. I don't think any other writer has used killer hedgehogs in a plot.

The investigation begins when Priestley's old friend Sir Noel Ellerby returns to his Lincolnshire mansion to look into a burglary in which nothing seems to have been stolen. Ellerby dies of heart failure, seemingly a natural death, but Priestley is not satisfied, and of course he is right to be suspicious. Soon he is on the track of an ingenious criminal with a high level of practical expertise, especially in the field of chemistry.

The case involves an excise fraud concerning contraband saccharine, which seems rather unlikely to me, if not as unlikely as murder by hedgehog. The culprit is easily spotted, but this is a lively tale. Priestley had another 69 cases ahead of him after this early investigation, but in few of the books is he as active as he is here.

Nightmare - 1964 film

Nightmare is a low-budget Hammer movie from 1964 that didn't make a huge impact on its original release. In more recent times, however, a number of critics - including the insightful Sergio Angelini - have expressed appreciation for its twisty plot. So I decided to take a look. The screenwriter and producer was Jimmy Sangster, no stranger to melodrama, and the director was the accomplished camera man Freddie Francis. The title is far from original but at least it's better than the unspeakably bad working title: Here's the Knife, Dear: Now Use it.

The film begins with a young woman of seventeen wandering around a gloomy old building at night and finding herself tormented by another, older woman. This turns out to be a nightmare, and Janet, the young woman in question, proves to be deeply troubled by an incident from her past. She's played by Jennie Linden; the role was originally to be taken by Julie Christie, until she got the chance to appear in that terrific film Billy Liar instead, and wisely seized it. Jennie Linden is okay in the role, but she's no Julie Christie. Her performance is rather one-dimensional.

Accompanied by a sympathetic teacher (Brenda Bruce), Janet goes back home, where she's the responsibility of her guardian, Henry Baxter (David Knight), to whom she is devoted. Henry has arranged for her to be looked after by a companion, Grace (Moira Redmond) and the housekeeper and chauffeur (Irene Richmond and George A. Cooper, who for once plays a sympathetic character) are also supportive of her. But poor Janet continues to be tormented.

There are some jarring elements in the storyline (early on, for instance, we're told that everything in Janet's family life was wonderful - until the day her mother stabbed her father to death - which seems a little hard to believe) and David Knight is unimpressive in a key role. However, the events unfold at a brisk pace and this kept me interested. Not a lost classic by any means, but okay viewing. 

Misery - 1990 film review

I've not read many of Stephen King's novels, though I'm a fan of Danse Macabre, a book about the craft of horror fiction, a genre of which he's a master. I did, however, very much enjoy the film of his book Misery and on watching it again, I found it still hasn't lost its compelling power. Part of the appeal to me comes from the fact that it's a film about writing; there have been quite a few of them, but this is one of the very best, if not the very best. 

Books about the writing process are one thing, and I've no doubt that King's novel, which I still haven't read, is excellent, but writing is rather difficult to film, and it's quite an achievement on the part of Rob Reiner, the director, and his brilliant screenwriter William Goldman, to make the film so pacy and yet create a feeling of authenticity when the creative process is discussed.

James Caan is very good as Paul Sheldon, a capable writer who has made a fortune by writing romantic stories about a character called Misery Chastain. But he's become a prisoner of his success and he wants to write more serious stuff that is more deserving of critical respect. I've talked to commercially successful writers who have faced this dilemma and although many would envy their fame (and wealth) the sort of dilemma that King and Goldman portray is a real one. 

The stand-out performance comes from Kathy Bates, who was little-known when cast as Annie Wilkes, who proclaims herself as Sheldon's 'Number One Fan'. She captures the character's mood swings brilliantly and the result is a truly scary performance. There are excellent supporting roles for Frances Sternhagen and Richard Farnsworth, while Lauren Bacall plays Sheldon's agent. And I do like the fact tha Annie is a big fan of Liberace!

Forgotten Book - Kilo Forty

Miles Tripp's last book appeared as recently (in relative terms) as 1999 and he died the following year. In his day, he was a highly regarded writer, if not a stellar name. But I think it's fair to say that he really is a forgotten author. But I've always found his books interesting and well-written, even if sometimes they reveal a lack of interest in plot that is disconcerting.

Kilo Forty (1963), one of his earliest novels, is regarded in some quarters as his best. I first heard of it when it was included in the 'Curiosities and Singletons' section of the first edition of Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. He said: 'All of the books written by Miles Tripp...under his own name (he has written some commonplace thrillers as John Michael Brett) are about people whose nerve-ends are showing, but Kilo Forty...is outstanding amongst them, a psychological study of the emotional conflicts between four people on holiday by the Red Sea, which explodes into savage violence. There is a touch of Simenon, some similarity to Highsmith, but a sort of tortured veracity runs through the story that is conspicuously Tripp's own.'

Alas, in later editions of the book, Symons did not mention Tripp at all. Perhaps he was disappointed by the later novels; I don't know. At all events, this rather reflected the steady decline of Tripp's reputation as a cutting-edge crime writer. Symons' summary of the novel is spot on, but I wouldn't say that this is an outstanding book, nor even as good as some of the other Tripp books that I've read.

I felt there was a certain waywardness about the way the ingredients of the story were put together. The prose is taut, with no padding, and the unusual setting is well-evoked; Tripp wisely resists the temptation to indulge in a travelogue. But I didn't warm to the characters and the way they behaved towards each other wasn't as compelling as it should have been. So, a bit of a disappointment, given that I had high expectations. 

Spy Game - 2001 film review

Spy Game is a film that appears to have a lot going for it. First and foremost, the cast is stellar. Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Stephen Dillane, and David Hemmings, for a start. I've been a huge fan of Redford ever since he played the Sundance Kid. Hemmings, sadly, died in 2003, just a couple of years after this film was released. He was a great loss. I remember watching him in Blow Up at a school film night, and although perhaps his career didn't result in quite the superstardom one might have expected, he was never less than watchable, whatever role he played. 

The film begins quite promisingly. After a dramatic action scene in China, Pitt's character, Tom Bishop, is arrested. We learn that he's going to be executed in 24 hours. Back in CIA HQ, Tom's old mentor, Nathan Muir (Redford) is on his last day at work prior to retirement. He's called in to deal with the situation, or so it seems. But why are his bosses so reluctant to take decisive action to rescue Bishop?

A race against time is on the cards. But then, something strange - at least to my mind - happens. The story gets bogged down in a sequence of extensive flashbacks, charting the progress of the relationship between Muir and Bishop. It's almost watching like a portmanteau movie, with some - it has to be said - not very exciting office scenes in between each action segment.

I'm afraid this method of storytelling didn't work for me in what was supposed to be an action movie. The stop-start approach might be perfectly suitable for some kinds of stories, but not this one. It became difficult for me to get interested in the characters or their fate. I've read some reviews (and to be fair, the reviews are on the whole relatively positive) that compare this film to Three Days of the Condor, but that is a genuinely exciting film and, to my mind, far superior to this one. Great cast, pity about the structure of the script.