The 20 Questions Murder Mystery (1950)

I really enjoyed this as it weaved a mysterious whodunit murder mystery, where somebody was knocking people off using the Thuggee method of strangulation with a silk cord.

Robert Beatty, the Canadian "Yank" who was in many a British film played the lead role and there were a number of recognisable faces, including Mr Quelch (Kynaston Reeves), and there was Wally Patch again as the heavy and according to the IMDb June Whitfield had an uncredited part with no character name and I have to confess I didn't notice her.

Based around the very popular BBC radio series "Twenty Questions" it had a number of people playing themselves including Richard Dimbleby.

Oh, and a suspect was Mohammed Ali.

I have the iwm films on sky plus haven't watched but did watch one with Will Hay and Thora Hird playing his daughter it was an information film about fighting incendiary bombs have always been fascinated by the old war era public information films

The Gelignite Gang (1956)

Straightaway before anyone says anything you know this is going to be one of those with a token Yank in it, as you see the private eye's door states "Anglo American Detective Agency", and so it was with a Wayne Morris in one of the lead roles who I'd never heard of, but according to the VERY long IMDb bio. he was a war hero who went out of favour a tad in America.

Called the The Dynamiter in The States it was quite an interesting B movie as it weaved in many characters and was fairly intriguing as the PIs and the police tried to find out who this vicious gang of jewellery/safe blowing gang were.

The Trollenberg Terror (1958)

Or "The Crawling Eye" is the Yank title, and did have its token Yank Forrest Tucker as the male lead.

Pretty much glowing reviews on the IMDb, especially on the horror of it all, but I think there are/were scary 50s sci-fi horror films out there. For me the only saving grace was to see the pretty Janet Munro who sadly died far too young at only 38 with what is basically an old person's heart disease.

I can imagine people laughing in the cinema at the "horrible" crawling eye.........................Oh, and the accent of Warren Mitchell's German scientist.

I didn't know about Janet
She was very pretty in The Day the Earth Caught Fire.
Gorgeous ,actually.

I enjoy watching tptv but do find they have very strange censorship on programmes and films where you see the actor speak but is silenced. I noticed it on the first episode of robins nest when he's father in law asked him about the Chinese owners doing a flit

Quote: Billygoatscruff @ 18th October 2019, 11:21 AM

I enjoy watching tptv but do find they have very strange censorship on programmes and films where you see the actor speak but is silenced. I noticed it on the first episode of robins nest when he's father in law asked him about the Chinese owners doing a flit

View original

Yes, a couple of films I have seen (and I've watched a lot on TPTV !) they have blurred out bums. I did email them to ask why, after the first incident at the end of "I'm All Right Jack", but didn't get a reply.

They do seem to silence the tv shows a lot but I suppose that's probably racist or homophobic jokes due to the years when the program was first shown.you are right they do blur out bums a lot

Dilemma (1962)

Usually find these 1960s thrillers not living up to their remit, but this was good and not overlong. I suspect an American version would easily have been padded out to 3 hours!

Nosy neighbour sees affluent young wife run screaming from her house in suburbia and she legs it down the road. Very much in love with her, husband comes home (in his Mini Cooper no less!) and cannot find wife, until.......................he checks the bathroom and finds the body of a middle-aged man barely alive who has been stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors. Wife's blood-stained apron in dirty washing basket. The victim dies after saying "snow".

The film then centres mainly around the husband, but what can/does he do to protect his wife? Did she kill him even? What can he do with the body?

Nuff said, as the plot thickens.

Just watching one with Harry H Corbett seemingly playing two characters - or is he?

The Flying Scot (1957)

"The Mailbag Robbery" was the Yank title (Grrrr) - had a devil of a job finding it on the IMDb, and it too had two 1950s token Yanks in it (one actually Canadian again), though why they couldn't have been British I don't know.

Ludicrous plot about a pretty mundane mail bag robbery where the half a million quid was stored in a regular railway compartment with no guard or security (WTF!!) and all they had to do was to cut through their seat in the next compartment that was only separated from next door by a ½ inch thick sheet of wood. I THINK NOT.

I was glad when the train got into the station.

Cover Girl Killer (1959)

Harry H Corbett as a very good creepy psychopathic killer, which made for a good film with the only other person I knew in it being Trigger's dad Charles Lloyd Pack who was only in it for about 5 minutes.

Worth watching.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Rave reviews mostly (154!) on the IMDb, but for me its just a load of mid 1960s hokum with poor effects. I found the TV series scarier than this, but that was a different era when I was more impressionable. One of the reviews even went so far as to say "One of the greatest science fiction films ever made - in fact my favorite." Really? You need to get to the cinema more often or update your DVD collection.

Only person of note for me was Sheila Steafel, and she was only in it for about 5 minutes + a long list of uncredited actors.

Another wasted 2 hours of my life.

Yes,it was much scarier in black and white,and with a cliff hanger ending every week.

Quote: john tregorran @ 23rd October 2019, 12:31 AM

Yes,it was much scarier in black and white,and with a cliff hanger ending every week.

View original

Yes! I think I've mentioned this before, but the last episode scared me shitless, as I watched it from behind the settee peering through my fingers. But even I was very young then