'Bizarre but watchable' is the verdict of one website on The Secret of Seagull Island, and you couldn't sum this film up much better in three words. I say 'film' but in fact its origin was a five-part Anglo/Italian TV serial and the jumpy editing that seems to have taken place in the process of adaptation contributes to the off-kilter feel of the enterprise. I was drawn to the film mainly because it stars Jeremy Brett, always an interesting actor. Suffice to say that he's not in Sherlock Holmes mode here...
We begin with a brief underwater scene, which ends violently before switching to Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) arriving in Italy to search for her missing sister Marianne, who is blind. A chap called Lombardi seems to know more about Marianne that he admits and Barbara enlists the help of a British cultural attache (Nicky Henson) who soon becomes smitten with her.
Barbara's investigation leads her to an encounter with David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett) who owns his own island, lucky chap, which he shares with a female admirer and...someone else. There are quite a few twists and turns, and although I should have seen the major twist coming, the truth is that I didn't.
It's an odd film, and certainly no masterpiece, but it's always fun to watch Jeremy Brett, particularly when he goes into OTT mode. It made a nice change to see Nicky Henson playing a wholly likeable if slightly bumbling character, appropriately called Martin, although I felt Prunella Ransome struggled a bit with a very demanding role. One of the co-writers was Jeremy Burnham, an interesting chap who - uniquely - both acted in and wrote episodes of The Avengers, as well as scripting one episode of Inspector Morse. It rather sums up the eccentric nature of this film that the soundtrack was written by Tony Hatch, better known for writing the theme to Crossroads.
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