Kino Lorber continues their fabulous series of obscure post-war British film noirs. I suspect most noir fans have never heard of any of these films, but if they are like me, these sets have become immediate favorites. These three films all come from 1954-1955, and two of them are really good.
Buy Brit Noir Collection IVThe Teckman Mystery (1954) was based on a TV serial that had aired on the BBC just one year earlier. Philip Chance (John Justin) is an upstanding young man and novelist whose editor wants him to write a biography of a test pilot who recently died in a plane crash. He coincidentally meets the sister of the dead pilot, Helen Teckman (Margaret Leighton), on his flight to meet his editor. He previously wasn’t too keen on writing the book, but meeting her changes his mind.
Before he can get much research done on the pilot, a mysterious man (Meier Tzelniker) shows up offering exorbitant amounts of money to fly to Berlin and write a collection of stories about life there. Before he can do that, a corpse shows up in his living room. Scotland Yard then shows up, spinning a yarn about espionage and vague communist threats. Complicated plot threads build upon mysteries and more mysterious.
Director Wendy Toye handles it all with a deft hand, laying it all out clearly. In doing so, she eschews some of the more atmospheric elements of film noir, but I didn’t mind. It all flies by quickly (at just 90 minutes, this is the longest film in the set) and goes down smoothly. John Justin helps matters wonderfully as he plays Chance, a smart playboy who slides off danger like water off a duck.
If The Teckman Mystery is a tight, well-oiled thriller, then Time is My Enemy feels like an ancient, broken-down clock. Barbara Everton (Renée Asherson) has a nice life. She lives in a nice house with a nice husband. She’s perfectly happy. And then her first husband, Martin Radley (Dennis Price), returns home. She thought he died in the Blitz. But since he didn’t, she’s technically still married to him, which makes her a bigamist.
Radley uses that to blackmail some money out of her. And then some more. Turns out, he and some pals robbed a jewelry store and killed a guard in the process. The jewels are too hot to hock, and he needs some money fast. For reasons that defy logic, she refuses to tell her new husband what’s going on and doesn’t go to the police. Instead, she tries to satiate his desire for increasing amounts of money herself, even though her husband controls the finances. It doesn’t go well. Until it does, with a quick and abbreviated ending.
With a runtime of just 64 minutes, this feels about twice as long. It never develops any sense of urgency, and Barbara is never more than a damsel in distress whose ultimate outcome is something I never once cared about.
The final film in this set begins like gangbusters. On a dark, deserted street full of shadows and some terrific noir lighting, someone steps into a telephone booth and calls the cops. In a building across the street, we see the silhouette of a man strangling a woman. Soon after, the police arrive. They arrest Robert Isaac Pitt (André Morell), put him on trial, and he’s convicted. When he’s sentenced to death, he screams the film’s title, which also flashes on the screen: You Can’t Hang Me!
A few days before his execution, Pitt demands to talk to Inspector Ralph Brown (Terence Morgan), the star of Scotland Yard’s special branch. Brown thinks it will come to nothing, but since the man is headed to the gallows, he hears him out. Pitt says he knows the name and whereabouts of a master spy who is planning something major. But he’ll only tell if he’s given a reprieve. As it turns out, Brown has been chasing this spy for ages, and since Pitt knows the codename they’ve been using, he takes it seriously. Not so seriously that he goes to the Home Office, but serious enough that he does some investigating.
The more he digs, the more he thinks Pitt knows something, but just doesn’t want to make that deal. Even as he learns nuclear secrets are set to get into the wrong hands, and the clock is ticking, he refuses to make that deal. Director Val Guest, who rewrote the script and started shooting on short notice, gives the film a propulsive kick that moves everything along quickly. Which is probably good because I’m not sure all of the plot points add up. But it doesn’t matter, as everything is so thoroughly enjoyable you won’t care.
Comic relief comes in the form of Brown’s manservant, giving us some much-needed release from the tension. The only down spot comes with Brown’s fiancée (Yolande Donlan, Val Guest’s real-life wife), who only exists to complain about how Brown never shows up for their dinner dates or forgets her birthday. These scenes are meant to be funny, but Dolan’s voice is so grating, and her acting is so awful that they can only irritate.
But mostly this is a terrific film. My favorite of the bunch.
Though I found Time is My Enemy to be a complete dud, I still highly recommend this set. The Teckman Mystery and They Can’t Hang Me more than make up for the middle film’s deficiencies.
Kino Lorber has given all three films new 4K restorations, and they look terrific.
Extras include:
- Audio Commentary for The Teckman Mystery by Film Historian Daniel Kremer
- Audio Commentary for Time Is My Enemy by Film Historian Laurene Lerman
- Audio Commentary for They Can’t Hang Me by Film Historian/Writer Julie Kirgo and Writer/Filmmaker Peter Hankoff
- Lots of movie trailers
