Hangman's Wharf - 1950 film review

Hangman's Wharf is a very good title, I think. It's the name of a short 1950 black and white film, directed by Cecil H. Williamson. It began life as a BBC radio serial written by John Belden, about whom I have been able to find out nothing. I almost wondered if it was a pseudonym adopted by Francis Durbridge, but there's no evidence of that.

Yet there are one or two Durbridgesque features to the storyline, including one of his favourite devices, the Enigmatic Message which lures our hero to an assignation at the Deserted House where, surprise, surprise, a corpse is waiting for him. There's also a touch of light-heartedness among the mayhem which reminded me of Durbrdge. Perhaps Belden was a disciple.

Dr David Galloway (John Witty) is a talented G.P. with hardly any patients- those were the days! An idealistic, he's opened a surgery in Shadwell, but hasn't endeared himself to the locals. When he gets a message calling him out to an accident on board a boat at Hangman's Wharf, he sets off only to find that he's been misled. But he bumps into a sinister rough-neck and a posh chap who send him packing. Then a warning shout from a young woman (Genine Graham) alerts him to the fact that someone is trying to kill him by dropping a barrel on his head.

The woman is a pretty young journalist, and he and she go to the police. But the affable inspector (Campbell Singer) doesn't beleive their story, and soon it becomes clear that someone is trying to frame the doctor for murder. The plot is nothing special, but it moves along at a decent pace. Singer is the only member of the cast with whom I was familiar, but I thought Genine Graham made the most of a limited role as the doc's love interest. I'm surprised she didn't become better known.

Blackout - 1950 film

Blackout is another of those short, snappy black and white British films which the Talking Pictures TV channel has resurrected. It dates from 1950, and was an early collaboration between Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman, who were later responsible, together and separately, for a host of successful TV series when I was growing up, notably the version of The Saint starring Roger Moore. Incidentally, this is an entirely different story from that in the 2007 movie also called Blackout, which I reviewed on this blog way back in 2010.

The screenplay, by John Gilling, is based on a story by Carl Nystrom, who wrote a number of TV and film stories in the post-war era. The initial premise is a version of a rather familiar, but often effective, opening to a story. A blind man turns up for an appointment, but arrives at the wrong house. He stumbles over a man's corpse, along with a sinister trio of bad guys who unwisely allow him to live because he can't recognise their faces.

Christopher Pelly is an engineer who lost his eyesight in an accident. When he tells the police about the crime he uncovered, he isn't believed, but he revisits the house where the killing took place,and befriends Patricia Dale, who turns out to be the sister of the dead man - who was supposedly killed in an aeroplane accident a year earlier. Together they determine to find out what really happened.

After a strong start,the story falters rather, and I found Pelly's refusal to involve the police sooner rather irritating. Maxwell Reed plays him in the manner of a poor man's Robert Mitchum, while Dinah Sheridan plays the plucky young Englishwoman with her usual efficiency. An interesting supporting cast includes the likes of Eric Pohlmann (later the voice of Blofeld in a couple of Bond films) as a baddie,and Campbell Singer, who was a familiar TV character actor in the 60s, as a police inspector.