Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 27th November 2020, 6:10 AM

The Shakedown (1960)

BLOODY GOOD FILM!

TPTV said this was 1959, so just passed my personal choice of 1950s films, and what a film!

Revealing the nasty side of the London sex trade, where Terence Morgan comes out of prison to restart his sex trade, only to find an equally vicious Harry H Corbett had taken the racket over, and so basically with now no criminal friends he can call on he decides to take a different tack by setting up a nudie studio (with legit photographer Donald Pleasance), which also has a "side-line" in blackmailing gullible married businessmen being photographed secretly with undressed models.

Corbett tries to smash Morgan's business, but revenge is inevitable and Morgan becomes the big name in the sex trade again, BUT oversteps the mark when he pushes one blackmail customer too far.

Robert Beatty is the police inspector trying to keep the peace, and there's the gorgeous Hazel Court, Bill Owen, Eddie Byrne, Jackie Collins and Angela Douglas (Kenneth More's first wife).

Morgan drives a very nice two tone Jag MkVIII saloon too!

Highly recommended - see it if you can!

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On again next Tuesday in the early hours - 02:10

Recoil (1953)

Mixed reviews on the IMDb, but I enjoyed it. Jeweller is accosted in the street for the case of gems he is carrying and dies, only just witnessed by his daughter who catches a glimpse of the main felon. The three robbers speed off in their car which crashes with only one survivor - the man the daughter caught sight of.

And so, this is where it gets a bit silly as she infiltrates the gang to break her father's killer's alibi, and not leave it all to the police, but it does leave it with a thrilling story and end.

Pretty Elizabeth Sellars is the girl - the rest are just faces you see in 1950s films. Nice Bentley (?) limo and early Hillman Minx for car spotters, with loads of London street scenes - cars parked willy-nilly with no yellow lines does seem a bit weird now.

An Inspector Calls (1954)

The original and best with Alastair Sim in the title role. Again, one of those films I'd seen bits of on a post Sunday blurry lunchtime drink and dinner - also featured a lot in the curriculum at the high school I worked at before retiring.

I should think most people know the story from the pen of JB Priestley, but to save me explaining it, here is the IMDb summary..........................

" Set in 1912, an upper crust English family's dinner is interrupted when a police inspector brings news of a girl known to everyone present having died in suspicious circumstances. It seems each member of the family could have had a hand in her death.

But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them? This was originally a West End play."

....................and you can see the influence of the play, as the film moves little from the interior room shots.

Apart from Sim, the only other faces I recognised were Norman Bird (in his first film), Bryan Forbes, George Woodbridge and briefly George Cole.

Good story, good twist. Everyone should see it.

Born of the Sea (1949)

Odd short film this, made in the fishing village of Coverack by what is now Charlie boy's Duchy of Cornwall, and starring all local people with narration by the "Voice of the News" then Frank Phillips, about the local lifeboat crew that set out in the fog and find the only survivor on an abandoned boat is a baby boy.

He's adopted by a young local widow whose husband had recently been lost at sea, then she dies and is raised by the coxon of the lifeboat who married her.

Now the boy is 18 and in the lifeboat crew with his adopted father when another maroon goes up and the lifeboat sets to sea. When it comes back the boy has been lost overboard, having "returned to the sea".

Pleasant 40 minutes.

Police Dog (1955)

Odd shortish film this - murder of a policeman with a bit of police dog training school thrown in.

Copper's mate gets killed by a burglar and he determines he doesn't want to be on the beat anymore. An abandoned Alsatian is found and he persuades his boss the police inspector, played briefly by John Lemesurier sic (bet he was happy!) to let him keep and train it for service. This he does but it plays havoc with his love life as his fiancé thinks he spends to much time with the dog.

Eventually, of course, the burglar/murderer surfaces again and is caught with the help of the policeman and his dog and everyone lives happy ever after.

Odd casting of Christopher Lee making brief appearances as a London Bobby, but apart from him and the gangsters moll, pretty Sandra Dorne, there was no one else I recognised.

Sad post script - the dog Rex III was a retired 7 year old police dog and a year after the film was made he had to be put down as he developed throat cancer.

Passport to Treason (1956)

Starring two Canadians - the huge (6'4") stocky Rod Cameron (playing a Yank of course) and Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell. Also had The Major again from FT (Ballard Berkeley) playing yet again a police inspector (I think this is the third one I've seen him in, in this part)

Cameron is a PI investigating the murder of another PI, much against the police's wishes this time and unearths a World Peace Society that is a front for a right wing movement and so ensues much chasing, killing and who is the head of it all, which is revealed as a twist at the end.

So-so reviews on the IMDb, but I enjoyed it, especially seeing TWO Ford Mk1 Consuls, both like the one I had as my first car!
This is mine, back in 1963..................

..............and after I'd sprayed it red.

The Ace of Spades (1935)

Only person I knew in this was Felix Aylmer (who seemed to remain the same old bald-headed man all his acting life) and he got bumped off early on, being the point of the film.

One man slugs him, he staggers out of a party and another man knocks him down, then the man that punched him is secretly given the Ace of Spades playing card with a message on it saying it was him that caused the death. Bit messy I know, but that's the gist of it.

IMDb:-
" The wife of a candidate for Parliament is having an affair with the brother of her husband's rival. The rival candidate, Trent, is running for election on a promise of building a railway that the community needs, but a wealthy landowner(Aylmer) won't give permission for the railway to be built over his land. When the landowner is later found dead, suspicion falls on Trent and only his brother can rescue him, but will he risk exposing his secret love to do it."

Wasn't bad for it's time if you can put up with all the clipped accents - "I say you chaps, jolly good party, what?"

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 2nd December 2020, 11:10 AM

Passport to Treason (1956)

Starring two Canadians - the huge (6'4") stocky Rod Cameron (playing a Yank of course) and Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell. Also had The Major again from FT (Ballard Berkeley) playing yet again a police inspector (I think this is the third one I've seen him in, in this part)

Cameron is a PI investigating the murder of another PI, much against the police's wishes this time and unearths a World Peace Society that is a front for a right wing movement and so ensues much chasing, killing and who is the head of it all, which is revealed as a twist at the end.

So-so reviews on the IMDb, but I enjoyed it, especially seeing TWO Ford Mk1 Consuls, both like the one I had as my first car!
This is mine, back in 1963..................

..............and after I'd sprayed it red.

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Change of colour,change of luck? wink...wink...

Quote: john tregorran @ 4th December 2020, 1:44 AM

Change of colour,change of luck? wink...wink...

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Say no more....................In the meantime

Scarlet Thread (1951)

A few years ago I'd seen the last 5 minutes of this film and wondered what it was about...........now I know, and not a bad film actually if you can put up with a 23 year old smart-arse Laurence Harvey feigning an American accent.

The other lead part is played by Sydney Tafler as a seasoned jewel thief who takes on Harvey as an "apprentice" after he had tried to pick-pocket Tafler outside the Warner Theatre, Cranbourn Street, London.(according to Reelstreets)

So, they recruit a getaway driver in the shape of 25 year old wide boy (all looking so young!) Harry Fowler and leave London to smash and grab an antique jewel encrusted medallion that is on display in a jeweller's window in Cambridge. All goes well until an old man gets in the way of the robbery, gets shot and falls back into the getaway car, leaving Tafler and Harvey to leg it while Fowler drives off with the body slumped in the back seat.

The pair of them get chased into the many alleyways of Cambridge University where they eventually inveigle their way into the Dean's house and charm the hostess who happens to be the daughter of the man they'd just shot. Eventually suspicions are raised and it all comes to a sticky end. Fowler switched cars again and presumably made it back to London, speaking of which....................

Some great looking post war and contemporary cars in this, and someone has come up trumps on the IMCDB identifying them, and the lorries, buses and motorbikes - someone knows their stuff!!

Quite good actually and worth a watch.

The Man Who Changed His Name (1934)

Quite good Edgar Wallace tale, and I couldn't explain it better than the IMDb summary :-

" A cheating wife and her lover conspire to swindle her wealthy husband out of valuable property in Canada. But soon come to believe the man not only is on to them, but under another name committed several murders twenty years earlier. Though the husband maintains a cheerful, oblivious demeanour, anxiety builds in the wayward couple as mysterious accidents and coincidences convince them they are marked for death."

With a small twist at the end, and pretty much as you would see it as a stage play, but doesn't suffer for that and is a short film, so just about worth a look.

Open All Night (1934)

Pre-war melodrama about the elderly night manager of an all-night hotel/restaurant who thinks he's up for promotion to General Manager when called into the office, finds instead he is being asked to retire, and so uses his last night to treat people and even get a young couple off the hook when the husband accidentally kills a man in a fight.

Apparently Frank Vosper who played the elderly manager, also played the assassin in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much made the same year and 3 years later died in mysterious circumstances, falling overboard and drowning during a sea voyage from New York to England aboard the transatlantic liner "Paris".

Sad ending, and worth a look if only to see what society got up to during the inter-war years.

The Halfway House (1944)

Only watched this because Mervyn Johns (one of my faves) was in it with his daughter Glynis, and I wonder if this was the only time the two of them appeared together in a film.

So, at the beginning we see various people with something to hide or are not happy with their lot and each decides to take a break at this lovely hotel in Wales, but apparently it was destroyed a year previous by a German bomber.

BUT, as they each search for alternative accommodation, they find that the hotel is still standing and so book in, but there is something odd as the calendar and the newspapers are all dated a year previous and Mervyn Johns, the landlord does not appear in a mirror, also his daughter (Glynis Johns playing his daughter in the film) does not cast a shadow when she outside on a sunny day.....................Oooooer

Has holes in it of course, but not a bad film, and certainly worth a look.

Time Without Pity (1957)

The TPTV short blurb made this sound just my sort of film - Michael Redgrave in a thriller, as an alcoholic writer/father who comes over from Canada to save his son from the gallows and has only 24 hours in which to do it.

For the first hour this was a good film, but they then went on to over complicate it and over act it with Redgrave and Leo McKern being the biggest culprits. Mixed reviews on the IMDb, and one reviewer summed it up nicely with "An Hysterical Mess".

The plot became just plain daft and I was then just willing the film to end.

The only saving grace for me, was that McKern played a very successful car dealer and so there were loads of fabulous motors on view, such as the massive Humber Pullman MkIII, Humber Super Snipe Mk IV, Austin A70 Hereford, Austin-Healey 100/4 (3000), Ford Zephyr Six MkI etc. etc. etc., not forgetting the hairy Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Coupé 'Gullwing' on a test track.

This could have been such a good film, but the silly plot and the overacting killed it stone dead for me.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940)

Ridiculous story of murder by vacuum cleaner (don't ask), as a female constable is given the chance to go undercover for Scotland Yard and solve a double murder where the victims had attended and then left money to a phoney clairvoyant, whose assistant was played by a young chubby Irene Handl, with no intended comedy.

Only other person I knew in it was again, of course, a young Nigel Patrick, and I did notice that for the young love interest Janet Johnson (an Australian actress with perfect English accent), this was her last film in a career of only 5 years, but then she seems to have married the 5th Baronet Birkin, Charles Lloyd - nuff said, she was pretty.

Just about worth a look, but a bit amateurish.

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 9th December 2020, 6:15 AM

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940)

Ridiculous story of murder by vacuum cleaner (don't ask), as a female constable is given the chance to go undercover for Scotland Yard and solve a double murder where the victims had attended and then left money to a phoney clairvoyant, whose assistant was played by a young chubby Irene Handl, with no intended comedy.

Only other person I knew in it was again, of course, a young Nigel Patrick, and I did notice that for the young love interest Janet Johnson (an Australian actress with perfect English accent), this was her last film in a career of only 5 years, but then she seems to have married the 5th Baronet Birkin, Charles Lloyd - nuff said, she was pretty.

Just about worth a look, but a bit amateurish.

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Wasn't the police inspector Edward Lexy? He appears in quite a few films on TPTV (including Smart Alec) and, more importantly, was schoolmaster Mr Prout to Gerald Campion's classic portrayal of you-know-who.