Wednesday 26 April 2017

Stranger in Town - 1957 film review

Stranger in Town is a black and white movie adapted from a novel by Frank Chittenden called The Uninvited. I know very little about Chittenden, but he appears to have produced five novels, generally as by F.A. Chittenden. This one appears to have been his last effort, which is surprising, as it was adapted for radio even before being filmed - a successful note to bow out on, if one assumes he gave up writing crime fiction afterwards.

The director was George Pollock, today remembered by me as the director of Murder Most Foul, the movie that introduced me to Agatha Christie. He was responsible for four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford, and also for the 1965 film Ten Little Indians, a somewhat regrettable version of Christie's finest novel. He wasn't Hitchcock, that's for sure, but he was a competent entertainer.

In this story, a moody composer is murdered, and his former girlfriend (Ann Paige) mourns him. The death is put down as suicide, but once John Madison (played by Alex Nicol) turns up and starts poking his nose in, the villagers become increasingly defensive. Surely it wasn't a case of murder? Well, we can predict the answer long before a second death occurs.

The story is so-so, and the real joy of this film lies in the supporting cast, which features actors who became more successful than the lead actors (whose performances are not terribly gripping). So we have Willoughby Goddard, so wonderful in the William Tell series a couple of years after this film came out, Harry Towb, Charles Lloyd Pack, and the marvellous Arthur Lowe all in minor parts. Not  a bad film, and I'd be interested to learn more about Chittenden.


3 comments:

Val said...

Interesting post Thanks! Do you know the title of the radio production?
I can see on Genome that they broadcast The Uninvited as a 14 part Book at bedtime in 1955 but I can't find a record of a play (usually this is my search skills at fault)
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=0&q=Frank+Chittenden+&media=all&yf=1923&yt=2009&mf=1&mt=12&tf=00%3A00&tt=00%3A00#search

I was just curious in case some one still had a recording.

Dawn said...

Hello i dont know if anyone will still get a notification for this post, but Frank Chittenden was my Great Grandfather and i am trying to find a copy of some of his books if anyone could help please get in touch...thank you

Martin Edwards said...

Hello, Dawn, nice to hear from you. Can you tell us any more about him and his work?