A Jolly Bad Fellow aka They All Died Laughing - 1964 film review

C.E. Vulliamy wrote his crime fiction in two phases. First came the Anthony Rolls books in the Golden Age - two of them have appeared as British Library Crime Classics. And then, for a dozen years from 1952, he wrote a further set of novels. Francis Iles was, I think, his principal inspiration, but his writing had a distinct flavour of its own.

That 1952 novel was Don Among the Dead Men. Twelve years after it appeared it was made into a film with an equally punning title, A Jolly Bad Fellow. It's a black comedy directed by the accomplished Don Chaffey, and although it wasn't a box office success, it still remains very watchable today, because of the range of talents which contributed to its making, not least the principal scriptwriter, Robert Hamer, who is best remembered for the wonderful Kind Hearts and Coronets. The jaunty soundtrack was written by the great John Barry. And the cast is terrific.

The setting is an august university, Ockham. Professor Bowles-Ottery (Leo McKern) is a chemistry don with a taste for publicity that irritates his collegues. Conversely, their prudishness irritates him. He's married to an actress (Maxine Audley) and has an extremely glamorous lab assistant called Delia (Janet Munro). Whilst working in the lab alongside a junior assistant (Dinsdale Landen) he comes across a poison which causes lab mice to dance manically before expiring. Soon he is putting the poison to work as a means of disposing of people who make a nuisance of themselves, while embarking on a dangerous dalliance with Delia.

The lead actors perform with gusto and the supporting cast is distinguished. To name but a few, we see: Dennis Price, Miles Malleson, Leonard Rossiter (a very small part, alas), Alan Wheatley, John Sharp, Ralph Michael, Mervyn Johns, Duncan Macrae, and George Benson. I found the film to be really good escapist entertainment.

Long before his days as Rumpole, McKern gives a performance of great verve. Incidentally, I was sorry when I researched the cast to discover that Janet Munro died, after a period of alcoholism, at the age of 38. She was well-known for her exceptional good looks, but like her rival in this film Maxine Audley, she had a compelling screen presence and a great deal of acting ability.

 

 

Web of Evidence - 1959 film review

Web of Evidence is the American title of a 1959 British film which in this country was called Beyond This Place. The screenplay was based on a novel by A.J. Cronin, also called Beyond This Place. Cronin isn't someone I associate with crime writing, and I guess the novel may be a bit more of a mainstream book than a thriller. But he was a good novelist - and the creator of Dr Finlay's Casebook - and I imagine it's worth reading.

The film is one of those which grafts American actors on to a British story solely for commercial reasons. Fortunately, in this case the actors are Van Johnson and Vera Miles, both of whom were very capable performers. Oddly enough, the setting is Liverpool, and I was fascinated to see shots of the city as it was in the late Fifties - a much grimmer place than it is today, for sure.

Johnson plays Paul Mathry, who docks at Liverpool for a few days in the hope of tracing his father, whom he lost touch with at the start of the war, when his mother took him away to the United States. He is shocked to find that his father (played by Bernard Lee, just before he became "M" in the James Bond films) was convicted of murder, and only escaped the gallows with the help of a campaigner (Emlyn Williams).

Johnson decides Dad was innocent, and sets out to prove it. But he faces obstruction from the authorities, who don't want the old case to be re-opened. Vera Miles, a local librarian, helps Johnson in his quest, and naturally they fall for each other. But she too has a secret in her past. I wasn't qutie convinced by some of the legal aspects of the plot, but that didn't matter too much. The quality of the acting (the likes of Leo McKern, Geoffrey Keen and Rosalie Crutchley also appear) coupled with a solid story make this a very watchable film.

Sir John Mortimer R.I.P.

The death of Sir John Mortimer reminded me of the pleasures I have had from his writing over the years. As a law student, my first encounter with his work was watching a double bill of his plays – one of which was the highly successful ‘Dock Brief’. At around the same time, he created Horace Rumpole, the barrister brilliantly brought to life by Leo McKern in the deservedly popular tv series. I watched pretty much all the Rumpole shows, and enjoyed them enormously.

In his professional life, Mortimer conducted many criminal cases, and although his writing covered a wide range of forms and themes, he often dealt with crime. I haven’t read so much of his non-Rumpole work, but I do like, and can warmly recommend as a nice dip-in compendium, The Oxford Book of Villains.

This is a compilation which dates back to 1992. It contains an assortment of extracts from literature; Crippen, naturally, makes an appearance in the book, and Mortimer comments in his introduction that the doctor was ‘kindly, modest and hospitable’.

Here is a flavour of Mortimer’s light, urbane style from that introduction: ‘Murderers form a long section in this book and I would recommend you not to read it all at once, but to vary it, perhaps with an occasional con man or a few seducers and cads…villains are those who have been cursed with an unreasonably high degree of optimism. Deterrent sentences have little effect, because the true villain never thinks he’s going to be caught. In the days when you could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief, handkerchiefs were hardly safe in anyone’s pocket.’