A drunk is found dead and the verdict is murder.
Average low-budget crime drama made more tolerable by the faded seaside resort location.
Script: Paul Erickson, Michael McCarthy
Director: Michael McCarthy
Players: Paul Carpenter, Rona Anderson, Jane Griffiths, Ronald Leigh Hunt, Tony Quinn, Jack Taylor, Robert O'Neill, Rose Alba
Terence Morgan is the crook who runs a racket where amateur photographers get to snap nude models. Hardly earth-shattering these days, more the sort of thing you go to Night School to do at the local tech. Still, Hazel Court is the copper who has to go undercover to investigate.
Script: Leigh Vance, John Lemont
Director: John Lemont
Players: Donald Pleasence, Robert Beatty, Bill Owen, Harry H. Corbett, Angela Douglas, Timothy Bateson
Kenneth More is the English innocent at large in the Wild Wild West. Jayne Mansfield is the gal who teaches him the ways of the world.
It's a retread of The Paleface, but it's still a fun comedy and the stars work together far better than could be expected.
Script adapt.: Arthur Dales. (o.a. Jacob Hay)
Director: Raoul Walsh
Players: Henry Hull, William Campbell, Bruce Cabot, Reed de Rouen, Ronald Squire, Robert Morley, Sidney James
The crew of an old gun boat buy her up after the war and go in for small time smuggling. The more serious their activities, the more the boat falls apart. Can be read as an allegory for post-war disillusion, or maybe for post-war cinema.
Script adapt.: Michael Relph, Basil Dearden, John Whiting. (o.a. Nicholas Monsarrat)
Director: Basil Dearden
Players: Richard Attenborough, Virginia McKenna, George Baker, Roland Culver, Bill Owen, Bernard Lee, Ralph Truman, John Chandos, John Longden, Harold Goodwin, David Langton, Stratford Johns
The history of a Glasgow shipbuilding yard from 1932 to 1943.
One of the great templates for British social realism is possibly John Baxter's best film. It deals with the effects of the Depression on a community and the great change pre-war rearmament and the return of full employment brings.
Script: Gordon Wellesley, Reginald Pound, Stephen Potter
Director: John Baxter
Players: Clive Brook, Moreland Graham, Nell Ballantyne, Finlay Currie, Geoffrey Hibbert, Allan Jeyes, Moira Lister, Frederick Leister, Gus McNaughton, John Turnbull, Ian Sadler, Bertram Wallis, Caven Watson, James Woodburn, Beckett Bould, Patric Curwen, Michael Gainsborough, Emrys Jones, David Keir, Ian MacLean, Dudley Paul, Walter Roy, David Trickett, C Denier Warren, Alec Faversham
Gracie Fields is the barmaid who leads the campaign to reopen the local shipyard.
Script: Karl Tunberg, Don Ettlinger
Director: Monty Banks
Players: Sydney Howard, Morton Selten, Norma Varden, Tucker McGuire, Oliver Wakefield, MacDonald Parke, Richard Cooper, Joan Cowick, Monty Banks
An actress's affair results in murder.
Anthony Asquith's enjoyable examination of the film industry has a fair claim to be Britain's best silent picture.
Script: John Orton, Anthony Asquith
Director: Anthony Asquith
Players: Annette Benson, Brian Aherne, Donald Calthrop, Wally Patch, David Brooks, Ella Davenport, Chili Bouchier, Tubby Philips, Ian Wilson, Judd Green, Jack Rawl
Antique dealer Oscar Homolka is an escaped convict who is desperate to hide his secret from daughter Muriel Pavlow. Blackmailer Kenneth Griffith has to be silenced. A bit stagy, but a step up from the usual dross from quota-quickie king George King.
Script adapt.: Katherine Strueby. (o.a. Edward Percy)
Director: George King
Players: Manning Whiley, Derek Farr, Kathleen Harrison, Garry Marsh, Irene Handl, Johnnie Schofield, Diana Dors, Jan van Loewen
This partly-autobiographical film is not one of Gracie Fields' best. In it she's plucked from the mill by a composer (Owen Nares) who needs a voice capable of performing his songs. She hits the big time with more popular material while he fades away from TB and the sickly sentiment all but sinks the film.
Script: Austin Melford, Anthony Kimmins
Director: Basil Dean
Players: John Stuart, Horace Hodges, Edward Rigby, Amy Veness, Jack Hobbs
