The Third Alibi - 1961 film review

I didn't have especially high hopes of The Third Alibi, a 1961 crime film directed by Montgomery Tully, but I found myself enjoying a tautly directed and neatly written "inverted mystery" that surprised me more than once with the turns taken by the plot. The storyline contains several familiar ingredients, but here they are blended with a good deal of skill to produce a film that is distinctly superior to most British B-movies of its time.

The story was actually based on a play called "Moment of Blindness" by the husband and wife duo Pip and Jane Baker. Whether the play was actually performed before being filmed, I don't know, but as yet I haven't found a trace of it. The Bakers, incidentally, became much better known for their TV work, most notably on Doctor Who.

Laurence Payne, an actor best known for his TV appearances as Sexton Blake, and a man who became a reasonably successful crime novelist, plays a selfish and weak-willed composer called Norman Martell. He is married to Helen (Patricia Dainton) but having an affair with her half-sister Peggy (Jane Griffiths). Life gets more complicated when Peggy announces that she is pregnant. Helen refuses him a divorce and also keeps secret the fact that she is suffering from a serious heart condition. The plot potters around for a while, and the young Cleo Laine sings a ditty supposedly composed by Martell. (There's an uncredited appearance by Dudley Moore,  no less, as a pianist!) It is not a memorable song; suffice to say that Norman is no Burt Bacharach. Nor, when he begins to plan an ingenious murder, does he prove to be one of the more successful killers.

From the moment that his murder plot begins to unravel, the story gathers real momentum, and John Arnatt gives a nice performance as an affable but shrewd superintendent, while Arthur Hewlett makes his presence felt at the end of the film. In researching the film, I found a negative review by David Parkinson on the Radio Times site which struck me as excessively harsh. Much more thoughtful and perceptive is the review on the Classic Movie Ramblings blog, which describes the film as "a lot more special than one would expect". CMR recommends this film, and so do I.

Crosstrap - 1962 film

One thing about forgotten books.No matter how obscure they are, you can almost always track down a copy sooner or later (being able to afford to buy it is a different matter!) The deposit library system isn't totally infallible, but overall it works extremely well. The position is different with old films and old TV shows. Some of them are lost forever, because the tapes have been wiped or otherwise destroyed. One can only dream, for instance, that a complete run of the wonderful BBC TV series Detective will turn up sooner or later. And there are plenty of other examples of good shows that are still missing.

But sometimes fans get a lucky break. A film thought to have been lost suddenly turns up. Such was the case with Crosstrap, a B movie made in 1962, which, it seems, some fans had been searching for year after year because it marked the debut of director Robert Hartford-Davis (though I must admit his fame had completely passed me by). But a copy turned up a few years ago, and now it's available again and has recently been screened by Talking Pictures.

The film stars Laurence Payne, an interesting character because he was not only a capable actor, most renowned for starring as Sexton Blake in the Sixties, but also the author of a number of crime novels.  I was once told by a female contemporary of his that he was a man with great personal charisma. Here he plays a smooth baddie called Duke, who is involved in a jewel robbery. His gang are waiting in a deserted house for a plane to take them to Spain. Why they hadn't arranged to be picked up more quickly is not explained. Even worse, the house isn't deserted. A young couple, played by Gary Cockrell and Jill Adams, have rented it for a romantic first anniversary stay. What's more, a rival gang is staking out the house.

The gang's plot, in other words, is a bit of a mess. The same might perhaps be said of the storyline, based on a novel by the prolific thriller writer John Newton Chance. Bill Nagy and Zena Marshall are in the cast, and in fairness the story moves along at a lively pace. But the sex and violence scenes seem rather tawdry (yet also tame) by modern standards, and it's not a great advert, in my opinion, for Hartford-Davis. The best thing about it is Payne's performance, and the explosive final scene.

Adam Adamant again

I’ve invested in the complete collection of DVDs from the 1996-67 BBC TV series ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’ It’s a series I’ve mentioned before. Like ‘The Avengers’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Prisoner’, it’s utterly redolent of Sixties culture – right down to the melodramatic Kathy Kirby theme song - and it still bears watching today.

For those who don’t know it, the premise anticipates the Austin Powers movies. Adam is a swashbuckling Victorian adventurer, cryogenically frozen by his enemy, the mysterious and devilish ‘The Face’, and restored to life in Swinging London. He rapidly acquires a gorgeous companion, and even a butler, who assist – and sometimes obstruct – him in his battles on behalf of Good against Evil. The series featured many good actors, and one legendary director – the great Ridley Scott, long before Blade Runner.

The special features include a truly excellent documentary, which reunites Adam (the suave, if occasionally wooden, Gerald Harper) with his dolly bird chum Georgina (Juliet Harmer.) A fascinating fact is that the story-line was originally conceived as the revival in the Sixties of Sexton Blake. But the BBC couldn’t acquire the rights to Blake as a character, and he later turned up in an independent television series, played straight by Laurence Payne (himself an occasional crime novelist.)

There’s a marvellous account of the various names that were considered for the character after it was decided he had to be original, and not Blake. No question about my favourite – Darius Crud. Can you believe it? I swear it is true – I have the DVD to prove it! To my mind, it’s a great sadness that ‘Darius Crud Lives!’ was never brought to our screens. It would have acquired classic status.

When I first watched the show, at the tender age of eleven, I thought that Juliet Harmer was probably the prettiest tv star I’d ever seen, and all these years later, I’m not entirely sure I want to revise that judgement. Yet soon she more or less abandoned acting. Her role as Adam’s enthusiastic companion is still her great claim to fame. But a claim to be proud of, I think. The show was flawed, perhaps because the scripts were rushed out and therefore uneven, but it possessed elements of brilliance.