The Dark Man - 1951 film review

The Dark Man is an enjoyable, lightweight British thriller written and directed by Jeffrey Dell, whose first crime screenplay was an adaptation of C.S. Forester's classic chiller, Payment Deferred, in which Charles Laughton starred. The producer was Julian Wintle, famed for his work on The Avengers in the Sixties. This movie has a good cast, with the likes of Barbara Murray, William Hartnell, and the ubiquitous Sam Kydd in minor roles. The mysterious villain who gives the film its title is Maxwell Reed, who was apparently the first husband of Joan Collins.

Reed's character takes a taxi to a lonely house where he seeks to rob a petty criminal. When the criminal retaliates, he is murdered. And then the taxi driver is murdered, for good measure. The Dark Man is evidently a psychopath, although we never get to find out much about him. But we fear for Molly Lester (Natasha Perry) when, cycling past the scene of the crime, she catches sight of him.

This fleeting identification drives the plot, since the dark man becomes determined to eliminate Molly as a witness. Frankly, I'd have thought he'd have been much better off making a run for it. But no, he hangs around the coastal resort where Molly is working as an actress, now under the protection of Scotland Yard's DI Jack Viner (Edward Underdown). Molly is attractive and charismatic, if foolhardy, so we care about her fate; she falls in love with Viner, who is very much of the stiff upper lip school. I felt, however, underwhelmed by Underdown's performance.

The coastal setting is in many ways the star turn of The Dark Man. It's rather bleak, with a military firing range, derelict castle, and old lighthouse, but highly atmospheric. I don't know south east England well enough to recognise the location, but I thought it very well chosen.

Death Goes to School - 1953 film review

I was intrigued to find Death Goes to School , a 1953 black and white movie, on the Talking Pictures schedule recently. Public schools were a rather popular setting for traditional mysteries. Nicholas Blake, R.C. Woodthorpe, Christopher Bush, Gladys Mitchell and others wrote good examples, using the "closed society" of the English public school to provide a conveniently limited pool of suspects. But I'd never heard before of this film, or the novel on which it was based, Death in Seven Hours by Stratford Davis.

I discovered that Stratford Davis was a pen-name for Maisie Sharman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with the film's director, Stephen Clarkson. I know little about Sharman, but it seems she enjoyed a remarkably lengthy, if not exactly prolific, career as a screenwriter. According to that useful source IMDB, her first credit was a 1938 film called Night Journey, and her last was a 1973 TV mystery, written as Miriam Sharman. If anyone reading this blog is familiar with her work, I'd like to know more.

Death Goes to School is an unpretentious mystery, but competent and still watchable. It benefits from the fact that three key roles went to actors of genuine quality. Barbara Murray plays the likeable young schoolteacher whose scarf is used to strangle a nasty colleague. Gordon Jackson plays the rather macho police inspector and the ever-reliable Sam Kydd is his sidekick. They get the best out of their parts. There's quite a nice joke when Barbara Murray gives as her alibi the fact that she was reading a thriller called...Death in Seven Hours.

The plot is competent rather than dazzling. Various people at the school have a motive, as the thinly characterised victim really was very unpleasant. Someone outside the school then comes into the frame. I felt that the motive for the murder wasn't terribly convincing, but despite this weakness, the film held my attention. As with so many of those Fifties B-movies, it's decent light entertainment.

The Teckman Mystery - film review

The Teckman Mystery is a British film of 1954, directed by the multi-talented Wendy Toye and based on a story by Francis Durbridge, who co-wrote the screenplay.  It's not a Paul Temple story, but the lead character, Philip Chance is another debonair crime writer who finds himself unable to resist poking his nose into a baffling puzzle. Durbridge was never afraid of re-working characters as well as plots...

On a flight from France, Chance (played by John Justin) makes the acquaintance of a young woman called Helen (Margaret Leighton). She happens to be reading one of his books and they start chatting. When he tells her that he's flying home to discuss the possibility of writing a book about a dead test pilot called Martin Teckman, she reveals that she is Teckman's sister. It also emerges that a woman who had been working on the Teckman has died, apparently in an accident.

Once back in London, Chance finds that his home has been burgled, but nothing has been stolen. He is then approached by a mysterious foreigner and offered a vast sum to fly to Berlin and write a series of articles. Can it be that someone wants Chance out of the way, so that he does not make progress with the Teckman book? We can guess the answer to that one, can't we?

There are some recognisable faces in the cast, including Michael Medwin (still fondly remembered as Don, the boss of Eddie Shoestring in that great show Shoestring) and Raymond Huntley. There's also a cameo appearance by Justin's then wife, Barbara Murray. This isn't a Durbridge classic, partly because Justin gives a far from compelling performance, and partly because the story doesn't boast one of his most cunning plots, but it's quite an agreeable time-passer.