The Spaniard's Curse - 1958 film review

I sat down to watch The Spaniard's Curse without high hopes, to be honest. The title didn't inspire much confidence, but the Talking Pictures TV channel has dug up are some hidden gems, and I was taken by surprise when the opening credits revealed that Kenneth Hyde's screenplay was based on a story by Edith Pargeter. And that, of course, was the real name of an author I've long admired - Ellis Peters.

The original story is, in fact, a novella, "The Assize of the Dying"; I hadn't even realised that it had been turned into a film. It's a reminder that she was doing very good work long before the era of Brother Cadfael. And the story is certainly a good one, a cut above many of the other short black and white British movies of the 50s.

We begin with a jury worrying over its verdict in a murder trial. Stevenson, the accused (Basil Dignam, in relatively early and untypical role) is ultimately found guilty, and when asked if he has anything to say, he uses the formula of an ancient Spanish curse on the judge (Michael Hordern), prosecuting counsel, and jury foreman. Hence the melodramatic title, although I feel it is  much inferior to The Assize of the Dying, which strikes me as genuinely evocative.

Soon both Stevenson and the jury foreman die, and attention focuses on the judge and his domestic circle, comprising his dashing journalist son (Tony Wright, who played Jack Havoc in the film version of The Tiger in the Smoke), his ward (Susan Beaumont, an attractive young woman whose screen career was bafflingly brief) and her new boyfriend (Canadian actor Lee Patterson). Hordern gives an excellent performance in quite a challenging role.

The set-up of the story is full of promise, and there's a very pleasing red herring which fooled me completely for a while. After that, it faltered a little, and personally I felt that had something to do with Patterson's lack of charisma. The ending also felt a bit rushed. On the whole, though, I found this an entertaining film, a little different from the run-of-the-mill, and it's worth a look if you get the chance.




 

The Narrowing Circle - 1955 film review

I first read Julian Symons' novel The Narrowing Circle when I was a teenager, but until recently I was unaware that in 1955 it was filmed. The screenplay was written by Doreen Montgomery, a very experienced writer for film and television, who is said to have created the character of Emma Peel for The Avengers.

The novel is a good example of post-war psychological suspense fiction. Symons was one of the British pioneers in this field, although his fiction is much less well-known than that of Patricia Highsmith,the legendary American writer, whose work he much admired. The story charts the battle of wits and wills between writer Paul Nelson and the relentless Inspector Crambo.

The film is more conventional, and in terms of both plot and style, it owes almost as much to that Cornwell Woolrich classic Phantom Lady as it does to Symons' novel. A colleague of Nelson's wins promotion at Nelson's expense, and for good measure nicks Nelson's girlfriend. When he is found dead in Nelson's apartment, Nelson relies on an alibi. He'd gone off to drown his sorrrows, picked up a prostitute, and spent the night in a seedy hotel. But when Crambo checks the alibi, the chap at the hotel denies all knowledge of Nelson, and the girl cannot be found.

The story is told with some pace, which compensates for the flimsiness of one or two of the plot twists. I don't know what Symons made of it, though I suspect he wouldn't have been thrilled by its lack of subtlety. But it's a perfectly watchable British B movie, with Paul Carpenter as Nelson and Hazel Court as a woman who falls for him and then helps solve the mystery, with such stalwarts as Basil Dignam, Russell Napier and Ronnie Stevens in the cast.