Doublecross - 1956 film review

While researching my British Library anthology Deep Waters, I consulted a number of classic crime enthusiasts in the hope of broadening the scope of my selections. Jamie Sturgeon came up with a copy of "The Queer Fish" by Kem Bennett, an author and story completely unfamiliar to me. I shared Jamie's liking for it, and the story duly appeared in my collection earlier this year.

Kem Bennett may be pretty much forgotten as a writer now, but in his day he wrote occasionally for film and TV as well as producing a handful of novels, not all of them criminous. And he was involved in writing the script for a film based on "The Queer Fish". This was Doublecross, which was released in 1956, a year after the story appeared in a magazine.

Thanks to Talking Pictures TV, I've recently watched the film version. It's a typical British B-movie of its era, short, quite likeable, and crammed with actors who became familiar to me as I grew up in the 60s and 70s. These include William Hartnell, later the first Doctor Who, and the versatile Allan Cuthbertson, who was a good comic actor as well as adept at playing posh chaps in straight roles.

Cuthbertson and Anton Diffring play a couple of spies who are on the run, along with Diffring's wife, after committing a murder. They flee to Cornwall  - and the Cornish locations in the film are a pleasing bonus. I'm not sure which little fishing village formed the backdrop - might it have been Mevagissey, a place I've yet to visit? - but it's certainly nice to look at. The baddies hire Donald Houston, a local poacher, to take them in a stolen boat to France and freedom. But as the title implies, the trip does not go smoothly... Not a bad time-passer, though perhaps unsurprisingly I prefer the story.

Three Black and White British Crime Films

The Talking Pictures TV channel has given me the chance to watch a fascinating mix of older films, including some old crime movies that until recently were highly obscure. Naturally, the quality varies. Some of the films are "quota quickies", short films produced to make sure that a statutory requirement supposed to foster the British film industry was met. As with so many protectionist measures, it wasn't really a great idea, and it didn't last too long. Some "quota quickies" were poor, others surprisingly good.

Body Vanished, is a very short film from 1939, whose title gives you a clear idea of the storyline. It's a light comedy thriller, with Anthony Hulme cast as a police inspector, whose holiday with a journalist chum is rudely interrupted by a report of a murder. The crime scene is a country house, but the corpse cannot be found. Not at all a bad movie.

Hulme also stars - in more than one role - in a shortish film set in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Mysterious Mr Nicholson.. A solicitor sends a young female employee out with a will - a rich client has decided to disinherit his wastrel nephew. Alas, by the time she arrives, the client has been murdered. I'm afraid this is a pretty feeble film - at one point, the scriptwriter seemed to give up the unequal struggle, so we're treated to a long scene in a music hall, with a performing dog act that has no relevance to the story. The big twist came as no surprise at all.

Much better is a later film, Girl in the Picture, from 1957, directed by the very competent Don Chaffey. Donald Houston stars as a journalist investigating a cold case - the murder of a policeman. A photograph which shows a girl waving to the driver of a car believed to be that used by the killer, on the very day of the murder, leads him to pursue an ill-assorted pair of villains. There's not a lot of mystery in this one, but the pace is good, and Houston makes the most of his part.