First, a word of thanks to the loyal readers of this blog. In the month of May, there were more than one million pageviews (over 1.085 million, in fact), a figure I find astonishing and a number that represents a record for the blog. So thank you very much. As I've said before, I suspect AI has something to do with the upsurge, but I know from your emails and messages that it's not the whole explanation. And there will be a new free 'Life of Crime' Substack newsletter from me today as well. Plus, all being well, no fewer than three 'Life of Crime Premium' newsletters and supplements during the course of June containing plenty of fresh information about one of the great figures of the Golden Age, Gladys Mitchell.
Now to today's topic. Black Widow is a phrase that makes a good title, so it's no surprise that it's been used plenty of times. I've reviewed one film with such a title on this blog - eight years ago, in fact. That movie was based on a novel by Patrick Quentin. The film I'm discussing today was released three years earlier, in 1951, and doesn't have such a strong cast. It was based on a radio serial by Lester Powell called Return from Darkness. The storyline must have something, since in 1958 there was a TV version of the play, written by Powell for an anthology series, Suspicion.
Powell was, you might say, a journeyman writer, but he enjoyed success on both radio and TV . Among other things, he contributed a couple of scripts early on to The Avengers. The screenplay for the film, however, was written by Allan Mackinnon, another of the hard-working scriptwriters of the post-war era, and someone who also tried his hand as a novelist; I recall a book of his, House of Darkness, being reissued in paperback a long time ago, in one of the many attempts to launch a strong crime reprint series (Cyril Hare's first novel Tenant for Death also appeared under the same imprint, which is where I first discovered it, but that particular series of 'Crime Classics' soon disappeared from sight).
The film is one of those 'quota quickies' that were so common in the post-war years, and it was made by Hammer, whose forays into the crime field I find interesting. The set-up of the film is pretty good. Mark Sherwin (Robert Ayres, an American playing a Canadian) is motoring in Yorkshire when he comes across a body lying in the road. He goes to help, and is coshed and has his car stolen for his pains. When he recovers, he is suffering from amnesia, and doesn't know who he is.
The plot thickens nicely for a time, although it's all wrapped up with rather unseemly haste. The sultry Christine Norden plays the eponymous widow, and Jennifer Jayne is the love interest. The director was the prolific Vernon Sewell.
