Walk a Tightrope (1964)

Walk a Tightrope is a low budget 1964 British murder mystery with a nicely twisted premise which seems like it’s going to be rather intriguing. The good news is that it delivers on its promise.

Having a bad day at work is something that happens to everyone. Even hired killers like Carl Lutcher (Dan Duryea). Lutcher is having a really bad day. It was such a simple job but now it’s blown up in his face. It’s not just that things did not go quite as expected - things took an absolutely bewildering turn.

Lutcher is not the only one who is bewildered. It seems that everyone involved is confused and disturbed. Including the victim’s widow. Everyone is adamant about what happened but no-one’s story agrees with anyone else’s and no-one’s story makes sense.

The nice thing is that it’s not only the characters who are unsure of what is really happening. The audience is baffled as well. Baffled, but in a good way. We really don’t know which story to believe. A murder has been committed. We don’t know why. We know who did the killing but was someone else behind it?

As soon as we start to think that one of the people involved is telling a pretty plausible story something happens to plunge us into doubt again.

We also see the seeds of suspicion starting to plant themselves in the minds of various characters, and there’s a growing sense of paranoia.

When the major plot twists do kick in they’re deliciously nasty.

These were the days when producers of low-budget British movies liked to use imported has-been American stars whose careers were sufficiently on the downward slope that they would work for peanuts. Surprisingly it’s something that more often than not worked very well, since those superannuated Hollywood stars were often very fine actors. In this case we have Dan Duryea whose career was severely in the doldrums. Duryea was however a great actor and at a time when he was grateful for any work this was an excellent part that suited him down to the ground. He makes the most of it. Duryea was always marvellous at playing mean nasty manipulative characters who were also slightly pathetic. By the time he made this one the years were visibly starting to catch up with him and that adds a certain poignancy to his performance. Carl Lutcher is contemptible but he’s such a sorry loser we almost feel sorry for him.

Patricia Owens as the widow of the murder victim has a very demanding rôle. She has to make Ellen Shepherd sympathetic but we have to be not quite sure of her. Owens carries this off with considerable confidence. The supporting players are very solid as they usually were in even cheap British movies in those days. Trevor Reid manages to make Inspector MacMitchell a slight variation on the usual run of movie Scotland Yard policemen - he’s like a slightly dotty but likeable old uncle.

Richard Leech does a good job as the best friend who’s as ambiguous as all the other characters. Special mention should be made of Shirley Cameron’s touching performance as Lutcher’s devoted girlfriend Maisie.

Frank Nesbitt directed and did so quite competently. It’s one of only three features he directed but one of those three was another murder mystery with Dan Duryea Do You Know This Voice? which I’m now more than a little anxious to see, especially since Neil McCallum scripted both films.

Network’s Region 2 DVD is barebones but the anamorphic transfer is lovely. The movie was shot in black-and-white and it looks terrific.

Walk a Tightrope is a well above average murder mystery with a cleverly constructed plot and fine performances. Highly recommended and if you’re a Dan Duryea fan it’s obviously a must-see.

He Walked by Night (1948)

He Walked by Night is a bit of an odd one. This 1948 B-movie is usually considered a film noir. That’s probably because the cinematography was by John Alton, the greatest of all noir cinematographers. So it looks very film noir indeed.

Structurally it’s a straightforward police procedural, with a touch of that semi-documentary feel that was briefly fashionable in the late 40s.

There’s nothing startling about any of this, but it’s the killer himself who adds the oddness. He’s not a noir protagonist. He’s a bit of a mystery. He’s a guy who has never come to the attention of the police before and then one day he guns down a police officer. He’d attracted the officer’s attention by seeming to take too much interest in a TV and radio store. Before he dies the cop remarks that the guy seemed like such a harmless clean-cut pleasant-looking young guy. We never really learn anything about him.

The police officer dies. And suddenly this mystery killer is at the centre of a massive manhunt. The killing of a civilian is a routine matter but cops don’t like it when fellow cops get killed.

Almost nothing is known about the mystery suspect, except that he’s an electronics whizz.

Roy Martin (the killer) really does come across most of the time as a quiet and unassuming, and perhaps slightly shy, young man. There is however a definite obsessive side to him. And he’s a loner. Not just a regular kind of loner but an extreme loner.

And he seems to be up to something. He has some kind of agenda. Although the first killing took place as the result of an abortive burglary he is clearly not just a common burglar.

This movie gave Richard Basehart his first meaty rôle and he makes the most of it. It’s a tough rôle because Roy Martin is the kind of guy who keeps everything inside. He doesn’t reveal his plans, or his motivations, or his feelings, to anybody.

The other standout performance is Jack Webb as the LAPD forensics expert Lee Whitey. Making He Walked by Night got Webb rather obsessed by routine police procedures and their dramatic potential and it wasn’t long after this movie was shot that he pitched the idea of a radio series called Dragnet to NBC. Dragnet of course then went on to become one of the biggest hit series in TV history. You can already see traces of Joe Friday in Webb’s performance in He Walked by Night. It’s worth noting that the opening titles of the movie inform us that this is a true story but the names have been changed to protect the innocent, which of course became the famous tagline for Dragnet.

While Alfred L. Werker (a competent journeyman director) gets the screen credit there was a belief in some quarters that Anthony Mann may have had a hand in directing He Walked by Night.

The real star is of course cinematographer John Alton. Alton wrote a book on photography called Painting with Light and that’s exactly what he does. He was the Rembrandt of film photography.

The superb extended climactic scenes of the movie gives Alton the chance to pull off a truly stunning tour-de-force of noir visual magic.

Also interesting is the detailed description of a very early police attempt at building an Identikit photo of a suspect.

We never really learn anything about the killer. That’s why this is not a film noir. It’s too abstract. In fact it’s like a big game hunt, with the police playing the parts of the hunters hunting down a rogue lion that’s turned man-eater. They don’t know anything about the guy, they just know he killed a cop so they’re going to kill him because that’s the way it works. It could also be seen as a kind of war movie - you don’t need to know about the personal motivations or feelings of the enemy soldier, you just know that either you kill him or he kills you. Except that in this case it’s one man facing hundreds of cops.

What’s clever is that although we do feel sorry for Roy in the same way we’d feel sorry for a hunted animal the movie doesn’t try to paint him as an innocent or misunderstood victim. He is a cold-blooded killer. There are no heroes and no victims. The cops win because there are lots of them up against one man. So the result of the fight is pre-ordained. No-one beats odds like that.

I don’t think there’s any other crime movie of the period that takes such an extremely  abstract view of crime. In fact I’m not sure if there’s any crime movie ever that is quite so abstract. Which does make this movie very interesting and unusual.

An oddity, but highly recommended both for that reason and for its visual brilliance.

Man Detained (1961)

Man Detained is another of those British Merton Park Studios Edgar Wallace B-pictures of which I’m so very fond. This one was made in 1961.

It opens with a rather curious robbery. A safe-cracker cleans out the safe in the offices of the Maple Photographic Studio. When Mr Maple’s secretary arrives at work the following morning she calls the police immediately. After all there was a very large amount of cash in the safe. The curious thing is that Mr Maple vehemently denies that there was any money in the safe. He also insists that his secretary should not make any mention of the existence of  the money to the police.

And after the robbery Mr Maple starts behaving even more nervously than usual. Much more nervously.

The safe-cracker is slightly puzzled as well. He’s just lifted ten thousand quid from a safe and there hasn’t been a word about it in the newspapers.

When murder follows soon afterwards the police are puzzled but it’s obvious that the murder is connected with that mysterious money.

In fact the young safe-cracker who thought he’d had an extraordinary stroke of good fortune with his unexpected haul has stumbled into a very large-scale and very serious criminal undertaking.

The police can see the outline of what could be a very big and important case but they have no evidence. They may have to resort to unconventional methods to get the evidence, and may have to call on unconventional allies.

Bernard Archard plays Inspector Verity and he’s one of those character actors who could always be relied up for these sorts of rôles. Inspector Verity is efficient and honest. Clifford Earl plays Detective Sergeant Wentworth, relatively inexperienced but keen and competent.

Greek-born Paul Stassino specialised in smooth deadly ethnic heavies combining charm with menace and that’s the formula he gives us here.

In this movie we have two sympathetic police officers who seem to know what they’re doing. We have a clever and ruthless villain but he is perhaps not quite as clever as he thinks he is. Arrogance and over-confidence are often the weaknesses of criminal masterminds.

Over-confidence can afflict policemen as well. Their plan to trap the villain might well work but it is rather risky. In the end it all comes down to luck.

There are two women who play important parts. There’s Maple’s wife Stella (Ann Sears), treacherous and possibly with the makings of a femme fatale. And there’s Maple’s secretary Kay Simpson (Elvi Hale), smart and loyal but possibly in over her head.

Robert Tronson directed a couple of these Edgar Wallace crime thrillers and then went on to have a very successful career as a television director. It’s hard to fault the job he does here, given that this is a cheap B-movie.

The action finale is quite satisfactory (and enjoyably chaotic) although it has to be said that the standard of marksmanship among British criminals is absolutely deplorable.

This movie is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume 2 boxed set. It receives an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Man Detained might not reach any great cinematic heights but it’s well-constructed and very well-acted and it provides just under an hours’ worth of reasonably enjoyable viewing. The quality of these Merton Park Edgar Wallace movies is variable but even the lesser examples such as this are worth a look. Recommended.

Beau Ideal (1931)

The 1924 novel Beau Geste by P.C. Wren (1875-1941) had been made into a very successful 1926 Paramount silent movie directed by Herbert Brenon. Wren wrote a couple of sequels to his bestselling novel and it seemed to RKO to be a logical move to get Brenon to direct a sound version of one of these books. For some odd reason the first sequel, Beau Sabreur, was ignored and the second sequel, Beau Ideal (published in 1928), was chosen. The results did not please everybody.

Most of the film is occupied by a series of flashbacks. First we go back fifteen years, to the childhood games of Beau Geste and his band - his brothers and a young American named Otis Madison (Lester Vail). Otis and John Geste are jousting to determine who will win the hand of the fair Isobel Brandon.

We then go forward quite a few years. Otis returns to England to ask for the hand of Isobel (played as an adult by Loretta Young). He learns that John Geste (Ralph Forbes) is still his rival but misfortunate has hit the Gestes and all the brothers have joined the French Foreign Legion. John is in a penal battalion somewhere in Africa. In a quixotic gesture Otis decides he will find John and bring him home.

To do this Otis has to find a way to get into the penal battalion. But how? He can’t do anything dishonourable. That would be unthinkable. Fortunately fate steps in.

Naturally there has to be a beautiful but bad woman mixed up in the story somewhere. Zuleika (Leni Stengel) is half-French and half-Arab, a dancer known as the Angel of Death for all the men she has lured to their dooms. Now she is involved in a particularly nefarious plot.

One reviewer described the climactic battle scene as politically incorrect. This shows an extraordinary ability to miss the point. The whole film is politically incorrect. It is a film about a bunch of mercenaries (which is essentially what the Foreign Legion was) enforcing French colonial rule on people who had no particular desire to be part of the France’s empire. Unless you’re prepared to challenge the whole colonial concept (which this film is certainly not going to do) it’s very hard to make a politically correct movie about the French Foreign Legion!

Interestingly enough, given the extent to which the Legion so often gets glamourised, this movie portrays it as extremely brutal and rather incompetent. So it’s also a movie to offend French patriots!

Part of the reason this film didn’t set the box office alight may be the extraordinarily grim beginning.

Criticisms of this film usually focus on the dialogue. In many respects it’s a creature of its time. Early talkies did tend to be a bit clunky due to technical limitations of the early sound cameras and the dialogue was often stilted (partly because the actors were often ill-at-ease due to the aforementioned technical problems). A year after this movie was made those problems had been ironed out.

It also suffers from a less than brilliant cast. Ralph Forbes and Lester Vail lack charisma and the chief villains aren’t colourful enough.

Modern audiences will also find Otis’s motivations distinctly puzzling. It’s not just that he has a strict code of honour, he also has a deliberately self-sacrificing streak that may annoy some viewers. In 1931 it would have made sense.

Beau Ideal does have its good points. It’s visually quite impressive. The Legionnaires lost in the desert in the sandstorm is a frightening scene, the photography is good and the climactic action scenes work extremely well.

This movie is in the public domain. I have the Alpha Video version (which is pretty much your only choice) and it’s what you’d expect. It’s not good but it’s viewable.The sound quality is quite uneven although the dialogue is understandable.

Beau Ideal is by no means as bad as it’s often made out to be. It’s an average if slightly clunky movie of its type but it’s watchable if you’re in an undemanding mood. However, given the iffy Alpha Video transfer, I’d hesitate to recommend a purchase (I got it for a dollar in a bargain bin so I’m not complaining). Maybe worth a rental.

The Black Glove (1954)

The Black Glove, a 1954 release, is one of the movies released by VCI/Kit Parker Films in their Hammer Noir series. In truth most of Hammer’s early 50s crime movies were at best marginally noir but on the other hand they were often quite decent B-features.

The Black Glove opens as American jazz trumpeter James Bradley finishes the first set on his European tour. He’s performing in London and he should be going to be a celebratory party afterwards but he’s exhausted so catches a cab back to his hotel. On the way he gets sidetracked by jazz singer Maxine Halbard (Ann Hanslip). She offers him a home cooked meal. It seems likely that she has more than cooking dinner for him on her mind.

Bradley is a jazz musician so he’s a Cool Guy. Maxine is the female equivalent. She looks like the kind of girl who reads French existentialist novels. They hit it off pretty well.

Bradley is a bit disturbed when he wakes up the next morning to find a policeman wanting to interview him in connection with a murder.

One of the clues the police have is a record. It’s not a commercial pressing but some kind of demo record. It’s just vocals and piano and every jazz aficionado they’ve played it to assures them that the piano player has to be Jeff Colt (Arthur Lane). But Jeff Colt is adamant he had nothing to do with the record.

Bradley is following up clues of his own. All the leads involve music or musicians, or record producers, or have some connection to music.

This is very much a jazz crime thriller so it probably helps a lot if you love jazz and you think jazz musicians are ultra-cool. I don’t like jazz very much and I don’t think much of jazz musicians. On the other hand if you do like that scene and if smoky basement jazz clubs and jam sessions and night clubs appeal to you then it has to be admitted that The Black Glove does those things pretty well. This is very much a jazz murder mystery.

There’s not much in the plot that is overtly film noir but there’s a definite film noir atmosphere. The characters in this movie are the kinds of characters who inhabit the film noir world - failed singers, down on their luck musicians, unscrupulous record producers, pushy agents, lots of desperate people who are likely to do desperate things. They’re all just one lucky break away from the big time, and just one unlucky break away from skid row. And that atmosphere of desperation is done very well indeed.

The ending is very much in the tradition of the golden age detective story, with the detective (or amateur detective in this case) bringing all the suspects together to explain how the murder was carried out and to point the finger at the guilty party. Apart from being a cliché this kind of ending seems a bit wrong for this film. The problem seems to be that the movie is structurally a pretty routine murder mystery but stylistically it’s trying to be a frenetic and exciting jazz-fuelled crime thriller. The busy jazz soundtrack is actually an effective way to compensate for a low budget, and it’s also a good way to distract attention from any plot weaknesses.


Alex Nicol is a reasonably effective lead. The supporting cast is exceptionally good.

Terence Fisher would go on to be a renowned director of gothic horror films for Hammer but in the early 50s he helmed a lot of crime B-movies for them, some of which were pretty good.

This movie is released, paired with Deadly Game, as Hammer Film Noir Double Feature Volume 6. The transfer is pretty good.

The Black Glove is a solid very well-made noir-flavoured murder mystery B-feature. If you love jazz-fuelled crime thrillers then you’ll definitely want to check this one out. If you just like good crime B-movies you’ll find it quite enjoyable as well. Hammer’s early crime movies are very underrated. Highly recommended.

Forbidden (1949)

Forbidden is a largely forgotten 1949 British crime thriller.

Jim Harding (Douglass Montgomery) had been a brilliant chemistry student. Now, retuned from the war, he’s reduced to peddling patent medicines at a fairground stall. He’s in partnership with his wartime sergeant, Dan (Ronald Shiner). He knows he made a disastrous marriage but he’s now starting to realise just how disastrous it was. It’s because of his wife Diana (Patricia Burke) that he’s in the patent medicine racket - his old job as a chemist didn’t pay enough for her liking. Now she’s trying to get back into show business by an all-too-familiar route - the casting couch. As she has no morals to speak of this doesn’t bother her.

Meanwhile Jim has met Jeannie Thompson (Hazel Court), a thoroughly charming girl who also works at the fairground. You will doubtless not be shocked when I tell you that Jim and Jeannie soon fall madly in love.

One of the more startling things about this film (it is 1949 after all) is just how blatant it is about the affair between Jim and Jeannie. He is clearly sleeping at Jeannie’s flat every night and he is clearly not sleeping on the couch.

Jim seems to imagine he can get away with it because his wife is rarely home anyway and maybe she’ll never notice that he doesn’t get home until six o’clock in the morning. And even though they’re making no effort to be discreet at the fairground maybe nobody else will notice and tell Diana. Jim is a brilliant chemist but when it comes to ordinary life he’s just a tiny bit naïve. Apart from this he’s also inclined not to think things through and to take the easy way out, or take the way that seems to offer him immediate gratification. He’s just not sufficiently grown-up to understand that actions have consequences. When he decides to take action he can’t face the idea of having to follow through on it or accept the consequences.

There is a touch of film noir here. Jim is basically a decent enough fellow but his weakness of character gets him into trouble and could get him into very big trouble indeed. In this case the irony is that it’s the Good Girl type (Jeannie) rather than the Femme Fatale type (Diana) who leads him into the abyss. Jim thinks he’s found what he’s always wanted and he’s determined to have it and have it now even though commonsense would suggest the wisdom of proceeding slowly and cautiously.

There’s also a definite hint of noir visual style with quite a few night shots and a few quite effectively moody sequences. Hone Glendinning’s black-and-white cinematography is not flashy but it’s quite impressive.

The fairground setting also (to me at least) gives an impression of noirness - cheap seedy glamour, the sense of an outsider community and of course a feeling of artificiality.

Douglass Montgomery was the sort of American actor who pops up in these late 40s/early 50s British crime films. He had seemed on the way to stardom in the 30s but by 1949 his career had pretty much spluttered out. Which meant he would work for a very modest pay cheque but still give the movie the transatlantic flavour that seemed so terribly important to the people running the British movie and TV industries in the postwar period. He’s an actor I’ve never encountered before but he does a decent job. Jim Harding is a bit of a fool and he is technically being just as immoral as his wife but Montgomery is able to convince us that he’s well-meaning and perhaps even convince us that he’s as much a victim as a villain.

Hazel Court was of course one of the great British actresses of this era and she’s terrific as always. She plays Jeannie as a woman who is a bit of an innocent, thinking that love is all that matters, and not really knowing what she’s getting herself into.

Patricia Burke as Diana is in full-on bitch mode right from the start and she does it magnificently.

There’s a slight class subtext here. Both Jim and Diana are upper middle class and educated. Jeannie is working class and uneducated. Their relationship was always going to face some difficulties even without the Diana problem.

The supporting cast is very good. Ronald Shiner as Dan is mainly a comic relief character but he’s a likeable and genuinely amusing rogue.

Network’s region 2 DVD release also includes a different cut of the film, released as Scarlet Heaven. The transfer is extremely good. Forbidden has also been released on DVD (again in Region 2) by Odeon Entertainment.

I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it’s a Neglected Gem but Forbidden is a solid crime thriller with a few touches that are likely to make it of interest to film noir fans as well as fans of British mystery thrillers of this period. The plot mostly consists of well-worn clichés but it has a couple of reasonable twists at the end. It’s nothing startling but it’s well-made and well-acted and looks good. Recommended.

Rawhide (1951)

Rawhide is one of the lesser remembered westerns of the early 50s, but with Henry Hathaway directing, a script by Dudley Nichols and two major stars (Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward) this 1951 20th Century-Fox production is clearly no B-picture.

Tom Owens (Tyrone Power) is learning the stagecoach business on the San Francisco to St Louis run. He doesn’t like the stagecoach business but his father is the superintendent of the western operations of the company so Tom is learning the business whether he likes it or not.

There is bad news at Rawhide Station, a remote way station. Four desperate criminals, led by convicted killer Rafe Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe), have broken out of prison. They’ve already robbed one stage, killing the driver, and it’s assumed they will strike again. The news arrives just after the eastbound stage arrives. Among the passengers is a Miss Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward) with a baby. Company rules don’t allow children to travel when there’s additional danger such as that posed by the escaped desperadoes. So instead of travelling on the stagecoach crewed by two armed men and with a military escort she has to spend the night at Rawhide Station where there are only two men to protect her.

The two men are Tom Owens and the grizzled and grumpy Sam Todd (Edgar Buchanan). As you might expect Miss Holt and the baby would have been a whole lot safer on that stagecoach. Zimmerman and his gang turn up and Tom and Miss Holt are held captive while the gang awaits the arrival next day of an eastbound stagecoach carrying a fortune in gold.

Tom Owens and Vinnie Holt pretty much take an instant dislike to each other. In fact they clash so badly that we naturally assume they will end up falling in love (I’m not going to tell you if that actually happens or not). Vinnie is the kind of gal you might reasonably describe as fiery. She’s already in a bad mood and that mood gets steadily worse although eventually she is forced to accept that like it or not she’s going to have to rely on Tom Owens and she’d better get used to it.

Vinnie and Tom have also come to the inescapable conclusion that Zimmerman is not going to be able to let them go after robbing the stagecoach. They’ve become witnesses to murder and he’ll have to kill them. So they’re going to have to come up with a plan for survival.

Tom Owens is not a natural born hero. He’s certainly no coward but gunfighting is right outside his field of expertise. He’s really just a tenderfoot from the east and he’s pretty appalled at suddenly finding himself having to act the hero. Especially as he has absolutely no idea what a real hero would do in such a parlous situation. Casting Tyrone Power was a good move. He’s not at all in the mould of typical western stars and he’s convincing as an ordinary kind of guy who has to cope as best he can. He knows he’s no hero but he’s now responsible for the lives of a woman and a baby and he can’t escape that responsibility. And maybe that’s what a real hero is - a man who has no choice and is somehow going to have to prevail or die in the attempt. It’s a subtle performance from a chronically underrated actor.

Susan Hayward as a spitfire is the kind of casting that just can’t fail. She was a showy actress who tended to overact (and do so very well) and she makes an interesting contrast to the much more low-key Power. While there’s the usual Hayward feistiness here her performance is actually a lot more nuanced than usual.

Rafe Zimmerman is a killer but he’s no mere hoodlum. He’s an intelligent educated killer, from a good family. It was a woman who proved to be his downfall and she was the reason he was originally sentenced to hang. He’ll kill without hesitation if he needs to, but he kills like a gentleman. Hugh Marlowe is excellent. There’s none of the western villain clichés about his complex performance. There’s perhaps even a slight touch of film noir here - it’s obvious that Zimmerman was once a very decent and very civilised man, until the wrong woman (obviously a classic femme fatale) came along. The decency is still there but he’s made a fatal mistake and is now doomed. You know that even if he isn’t killed at Rawhide Station he’ll end his life on the end of a rope or being gunned down like a dog somewhere or other. Once you fall into the noir abyss there’s no escape.

These three key characters are all equally interesting and all have quite a bit of depth. All are, in their own ways, trapped by fate (we find that this applies to Vinnie as well once we find out how she managed to get saddled with that baby). So again there’s that hint of film noir - these are people who have become the playthings of fate.

The other members of the gang are not at all like Zimmerman and he has nothing but contempt for them. Gratz (George Tobias) and Yancy (Dean Jagger) are petty criminals of extremely limited intelligence. Tevas (played with gusto by Jack Elam) is a neurotic sadistic thug who likes to kill.

There’s not a lot of action in Rawhide. It’s not that type of movie. It’s a suspense movie and Henry Hathaway keeps the tension at the highest possible level throughout. The plot is on the surface a standard western plot but screenwriter Dudley Nichols does clever and interesting thing with a straightforward story framework. Most of all the film gives us characters interesting enough that we develop an emotional investment in their fates.

The Region 4 DVD from Bounty is barebones but the transfer is quite good.

Rawhide is a great western and a great suspense movie with intriguing film noirish elements. Very highly recommended.