Dead Man's Evidence - film review

Dead Man's Evidence is a short film from 1962 starring Conrad Phillips, who was a very familiar screen presence in those days. The screenplay was written by Arthur La Bern, an interesting character whose most famous novel, Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, was filmed by Hitchcock as Frenzy. La Bern was a pretty good storyteller who was also a journalist specialising in true crime.

And this is a story which, I suspect, was sparked by a real life mystery, even though I've not managed to find any discussion of the film which supports my theory. But in 1956, the mysterious disappearance of a frogman called Commander "Buster" Crabb made headline news. The puzzle has never been solved, though according to some theories Crabb was a spy who became a double agent. My guess is that the case inspired La Bern, even though his story moves in a fresh direction after the body of a diver with connections to the intelligence services is washed up on an Irish beach.

Conrad Phillips plays David Baxter, an intelligence officer who is asked to look into the death of the diver. Could the body belong to a friend of Baxter's, who was suspected of being a double agent? The only clue is a ring that appeared on the dead man's finger, but which quickly vanished. Can someone be trying to conceal the identity of the deceased, and if so, why? Baxter pretends to be an insurance investigator, but a local journalist, a woman photographer and her mysterious boyfriend all become curious about his activities.

The story zips along rather nicely, and there's a decent plot twist. The Irish setting is also well done. Phillips was a charismatic actor, even though he never became a really major star. He befriends a charming and seemingly naive young woman, a limited role but well played by Jane Griffiths; I'd never heard of her, but it seems that she died all too young. Overall, this unpretentious film is definitely worth watching. .

Forgotten Book - Nightmare (1975)

There are several books called Nightmare - I've covered Lynn Brock's intriguing book with this title previously - but today my subject is the novel of that name by Arthur La Bern. Until I found this Pan paperback in a dealer's catalogue, I only knew of La Bern as the author of Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, which became Hitchcock's serial killer film Frenzy, with a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer. So obscure did poor old La Bern become that even Shaffer spelled his name wrongly in his entertaining but somewhat unreliable memoirs. Yet he was not always obscure - far from it.

La Bern was born in London to French parents, and liked to describe himself as a Gallic cockney. He became a journalist,spending time as a crime reporter and also as a war correspondent in the Far  East. After the war ended, he wrote true crime books about the Acid Bath Murders and the Brides in the Bath Murders, and wrote TV screenplays for, among other shows, Fabian of the Yard and the Edgar Wallace Mysteries. His fiction seems to have focused on the sleazier aspects of London life. Among his novels, It Always Rains on Sunday became a successful example of British noir film making in the late Forties. Night Darkens the Street, inspired by the Hulten-Jones case, was filmed as Good Time Girl with Dennis Price and Herbert Lom among the cast. So he was quite a considerable figure in his day, and I'd be interested to learn more about him. Can any readers of this blog cast any further light on the man and his books?

Nightmare was a novel written late in his career, and I found it surprising and at times bizarre. The blurb on the paperback cover led me to expect a story in the manner of the late Patrick Quentin books. An alcoholic barrister whose wife has left him for a gangster takes an ovedose, but is rescued and put in a mental ward. "Then someone killed his wife's lover," the blurb continues, "and the nightmare went on and on..."

But this isn't really a story about murder. It's a short novel, but constructed in an odd way. Most of the book is set in a couple of mental hospitals, and it is soon apparent that La Bern has a very dark view of them indeed. In the second half of the book there are a number of relatively lurid sex scenes and there is at times a rather trashy feel to the story, while some of the topical detail now seems dated. But La Bern was a writer who, it seems to me, used melodramatic material to try to make serious points about the sinister side of society, though not with consistent success. Here he seems keen to deliver a message about the way m which people suffering from mental illness are treated. This resonated with me, because in the same year that this book was written, I made several visits to a friend in mental hospital; all I need say is that the experience made a profound and lasting impression on me. Those were the days when ECT treatment was quite common, and La Bern's novel reflects that reality.

La Bern also makes points about the sexual abuse of the vulnerable which may well have been regarded as the stuff of fiction in the 70s, but now, when we know much more about the behaviour of Jimmy Savile and others, seem shockingly realistic. Was La Bern driven to write Nightmare by some form of direct or indirect personal experience? It seems possible, but I simply don't know. The trouble is that some other aspects of the narrative remain implausible, and the unsatisfactory story structure diminishes the book's impact. Nightmare is a flawed novel, then, but very unusual and not, in the end, anything like the work of Patrick Quentin..