Murder without Crime - DVD review

Murder without Crime is a 1950 movie that is a sort of British film noir. It certainly has several intriguing features. These include its origins. It began life as a play called Double Error, written by John Lee Thompson, a Bristol-born actor who turned to writing for the stage, and it ran briefly in London in 1935. Seven years later, a revised version, Murder without Crime, enjoyed much more success in the West End, although when it transferred to Broadway, it sank without trace. This info, by the way, comes from Amnon Kabatchnik's monumental Blood on the Stage, which is a superb source; one of these days, I'll talk in more detail about Katbatchnik's books on mystery plays.

After the war, Thompson adapted his play into a screenplay, and directed a film version. The theatrical origins of the story are fairly apparent, and there are only four actors. Dennis Price is suave and menacing as the odious landlord Matthew. Derek Farr is Stephen, his tenant, who lives in the flat above Matthew's with his wife Jan, Patricia Plunkett. When the couple have a row, Jan walks out, and Matthew takes Stephen to a club - the Teneriffe - where he introduces him to the young blonde hostess Grena (Joan Dowling.) Stephen, who is not the brightest of men to put it mildly, gets involved with Grena,with disastrous consequences.

I enjoyed this film, even though I could have done without the American-style voiceover, which simply didn't fit a very British story. There are, however, several nods to the film noir style of direction, and you can tell that Thompson was experimenting, and learning his craft. He proved to be a very good learner, and in due course, as J. Lee Thompson, he directed several major films, including Cape Fear, Ice Cold in Alex, and The Guns of Navarone.

Dennis Price was always a fascinating actor, and he plays the bad guy with his customary style. But I was most interested to find out about Joan Dowling. There is a very poignant Pathe news feature about her on Youtube, filmed when she signed up with a movie company at the age of 18. The world was at her feet, it seemed. Yet four years after making Murder without Crime, she committed suicide, gassing herself. A profoundly tragic story. I'd like to think she enjoyed appearing in Murder without Crime, and that she was proud of her performance. More generally, this is a film that I can recommend. Not perfect, but decent entertainment. It deserves to be better known..

Noose for a Lady - film/DVD review

Noose for a Lady is a 1953 whodunit film which seemed to have been well and truly forgotten until its recent release in DVD form. Having just watched it, I must say I'm glad it's been resurrected, because it presents a highly traditional whodunit in the space of just over 70 minutes and provides decent entertainment from start to finish. The director, Wolf Rilla, by the way, later became renowned for The Village of the Damned, based on John Wyndham's classic sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos.

The set-up is very familiar. A woman has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to death. An appeal fails, and her fate seems to be sealed by the time a cousin (Dennis Price, that great post-war smoothie) returns from Uganda and decides she is innocent, and must be saved. So we have a clock-race element coupled with a hunt for a killer among the genteel family and social circle of the dead man.

Suspicion shifts pleasingly from one suspect to another. Is the killer the suave doctor (Ronald Howard) or the dodgy collector of knick-knacks (Charles Lloyd Pack, father of Roger Lloyd Pack, and grandfather of Emily Lloyd)? Or perhaps a retired soldier with a discreditable past, or the local busy-body, or the pretty girl Price's character fancies? Or...well, you get the picture.

The film is based on a novel by Gerald Verner, which in turn appears to have been based on a radio serial - this would explain why it is very dialogue-heavy. I've never read anything by Verner, but he was certainly prolific, with well over one hundred novels to his credit. He also adapted Agatha Christie's Towards Zero for the stage. It seems that Edgar Wallace was a major influence on him, but this story is more in the Christie vein. It's a competently made, unpretentious film, and like so many hitherto neglected books and films, it's now enjoying a new lease of life as it becomes, happily, cheaper and easier to make such work available to a new generation of fans at modest cost.

Ten Little Indians movie review

To be perfectly honest, I was expecting to hate the 1965 movie version of Agatha Christie's masterpiece And Then There Were None. Which is why I've managed to avoid watching it until now. But I decided to bite the bullet, and to my surprise found the film surpassed my admittedly low expectations.

The setting is a country house, of course, but this one is to be found at the top of an Alpine mountain accessible only by sleigh and cable car. The servants who greet the guests who have been invited by the mysterious U.N. Owen are locals, and when Owen's voice is played on a tape recording, I discovered that the uncredited actor who spoke the words was Christopher Lee (in a later version of the film, Orson Welles did the same job.)

The cast is pretty good, including Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price and Wilfrid Hyde White, as well as the ultra-glamorous ex-Bond girl Shirley Eaton, who gets to play a sex scene, albeit mild in the extreme, with Hugh O'Brian.

A notable feature of the movie is the 'whodunit break', an updated version of the Challenge to the Reader introduced in the Golden Age by Ellery Queen and also used by the likes of Rupert Penny and Anthony Berkeley. A gimmick, yes, but a pleasing one, at least to my mind. I enjoyed this film more than I should have done, perhaps. It ain't Martin Scorsese, but as light entertainment, it ain't that bad, either.

Pulp

I’ve not seen many films directed by Mike Hodges other than the iconic Get Carter, but the pleasure of meeting him prompted me to take a look at another of his movies (which he also scripted) starring Michael Caine. Pulp is the story of a pulp fiction writer, British but based in Italy, who is hired to write the autobiography of a dying gangster (Mickey Rooney, of all people.) He becomes embroiled in the violence that lurks not far beneath the surface of his adopted homeland, and his efforts to play the hero in the manner of his fictional heroes are not exactly a roaring success.

I suppose Pulp is best described as a comedy thriller, and striking the right balance between comedy and thrills is a very difficult trick to pull of indeed. There aren’t many successful examples – The Italian Job springs to mind, but few others. Hodges’ underlying purpose is serious, but I felt that the film sent out mixed messages. There were some excellent moments, and several witty lines, but for me, the ingredients did not add up to a completely satisfying whole. Viewed nearly 40 years after it was made, it simply seems too slow in places, and this is a pity, because there was a good story here, trying to make its presence felt.

The cast is eclectic and includes Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets) as well as a newcomer, Nadia Cassini, who is very glamorous but does not seem to have made a lasting impact as a movie star. The background music was excellent, I thought, and as the credits rolled I discovered that the composer was George Martin, who was such an influence upon the Beatles.

If you’re expecting another Get Carter, this isn’t really the film for you. Pulp has its merits, but I prefer a later Hodges movie about a writer. Croupier, starring Clive Owen, strikes me as more tightly written and much more gripping.