Blind Corner aka Man in the Dark - 1963 film review

Blind Corner is a British film, not to be confused with the Dornford Yates novel with the same title. In the US it was known as Man in the Dark, and it's one of those thriller films featuring a blind protagonist who is menaced by sighted people with sinister motives. The script, not based on a novel, was written by James Kelley and Peter Miller. Kelly died relatively young, but Miller continued working into the 1980s and his later TV credits included scripts for the likes of Bergerac and Shoestring.

Like so many British B movies of its day, this is a film with an American star in a lead role, a ploy designed to make the film more commercial. William Sylvester is Paul Gregory, a gifted but irritable composer who has settled for making money by writing pop songs. Gregory is married to Anne, a beautiful woman (played by Barbara Shelley) whose interest in him has faded since he tragically lost his sight. It soon emerges that she's having an affair with a young artist, Rickie Seldon and Paul's manager (Mark Eden) reveals this to Paul. Faced with the prospect of losing her luxury lifestyle, Anne contemplates murder...

It's a familiar enough story, but the plot is quite nicely handled. One weakness of the film is that, again no doubt for commercial reasons, it's padded out by the inclusion of two so-so songs performed by Ronnie Carroll, who was quite a star at the time. These scenes don't really add to the story's development at all.

Mark Eden is a very reliable actor, and he and Barbara Shelley give strong performances in a movie that's certainly watchable, if not exceptionally memorable, and Elizabeth Shepherd is also good as the secretary who is devoted to Paul, but despite my sympathy for his vulnerability, I felt Sylvester rather overdid the irascibility.   

The Beast in the Cellar - 1970 film review

In the green and pleasant English countryside, someone is killing soldiers from a local military base in an especially gruesome way. Is a wild animal responsible, or is something even more sinister going on? This is the premise of a 1970 film written and directed by James Kelley, The Beast in the Cellar. The title is something of a plot giveaway, and needlessly unsophisticated given that Kelley was aiming for something relatively ambitious.

After the first killing, we're introduced to two elderly sisters who live together in a secluded old house, not far away from the base. They have connections with the military through their father, a former war hero. One of the sisters, played by Flora Robson, is the dominant one of the pair, looking after Beryl Reid, an affectionate but not very bright character, rather under her sister's thumb.

Robson and Reid were both very good actors, and one of the features of this film is that the cast is a cut above the average. Tessa Wyatt, hugely popular in those days, not least with me, plays a young nurse, and T.P, McKenna is the detective trying to solve the case. The body count begins to rise. But who has a grudge against the young soldiers?

The plot twists are fairly predictable. Kelley was, I feel sure, trying to combine suspense with a character-driven drama, but he falls rather between two stools. The film is certainly watchable, as you'd expect with such a cast, and a lively score by Tony Macaulay is a bonus - there's even a song performed by, believe it or  not, Ediston Lighthouse. But it's a very talky piece of work, and more of a not very horrific horror film than a crime story. Rural Britain provides plenty of scope for dark drama, just as it does for traditional mysteries, but this film, although it has merits, is really a missed opportunity. .