User Reviews

It seems that one of the stock plot devices of thrillers made in the fifties is for the murderer to set up what he considers to be a cast iron alibi when he commits a murder.In this film it is a trip to the theatre,so one is hardly likely to find anything very original in this film. As he is dying from poison Donald Houston tells him that there is a flaw.Well there usually is otherwise the murderer would not be caught. In this instance there is a twist in the tail,so that the murderer gets his just deserts and his wife gets her real love who is of course Houston. Terence Fisher directs in his unostatious manner and brings the film to its not unexpected conclusion.

As the final note played out to Face the Music (1954-also reviewed),I decided to take a look on Talking Pictures free online catch-up service for other titles by Terence Fisher, which led to me finding a Noir by Fisher with a runtime of under an hour,leading to me exploring the flaw.

View on the film:

Highlighted in Tony Dalton's excellent book Terence Fisher: Master of Gothic Cinema, that on looking back at the movies he made between his first and second Hammer contracts, that his options were limited,leading him to feel that "Beggars can't be choosers" on what he made in this era.

Visibly working on a small budget that leads to the locations to feel tight and tiny, due to how firmly held the camera is towards the corner of rooms, and lacking the extended first-person sequences of other Film Noir titles he did, director Terence Fisher & cinematographer Cedric Williams bring a rough and tumble Thriller mood to the final sequence,where Fisher stylishly pans around the floor of the sailing boat,as Paul and Millway wrestle on the floor to their death.

Unwrapping Paul, (played with a slippery grin by John Bentley) laying out the plans for the murder of his wife, the screenplay by Brandon Fleming initial goes in the fast lane over the menacing threat of Monica (played with a icy edge by Rona Anderson) having the risk of being killed hang over her, be thrown away with a horribly abrupt ending,that leaves the film with a fatal flaw.

A suave, high living racing car driver called Paul Oliveri (John Bentley) marries the young heiress Monica Crewson (Rona Anderson) much to the chagrin of her friends who believe that he is bad news and can only be after her money. Her lawyer and former lover John Millway (Donald Houston) hires a private eye to keep tabs on him and discovers that he is seeing another woman. Although he has only been married to Monica for little under a year, Oliveri has sponged £20,000 from her to fund his lifestyle and his mistress. But, Millway eventually discovers that Oliveri plans to murder Monica for her fortune estimated to be worth about half a million pounds. He succeeds in convincing her about his suspicions and she leaves him moving into a seaside cottage in Southaven. However, Oliveri knows what Millway has been up to and devises what he believes to be a foolproof way of killing him so that he can carry on working on Monica without any interruptions. He goes to a show kicking up a fuss at the box office so that the staff remember him. He slips out the backdoor and picks Millway up as he leaves his regular game of Bridge and takes him back to his house on the pretext of wanting to discuss a legal matter. He gives him a glass of poisoned whisky and, as he dies, he boasts to his victim about his plan and how he will hide his body in the back of his car covering it with a rug and locking it up in the garage. He will slip back to the show in a taxi and spend the remainder of the evening at a club with friends talking about the show to further his alibi. The next day he will take his body to his boat at Southaven, attach some weights to it and take it out to sea and quietly dispose of it by tossing it overboard in the hope it will never be discovered. In his dying words Millway gasps "There's a flaw", but what is it that could finally give the devious and cunning Oliveri away?

This low budget British support feature will be of interest to film buffs because it is an early work by director Terence Fisher who within a year of making this would go on to achieve fame at Hammer with his groundbreaking gothic horror films. Any film directed by Fisher is usually worth watching - even the pre-horror stuff when he was a prolific second feature man. Although the low budget sometimes shows and threatens to undermine the work, it is extremely well acted all round with John Bentley shining as the sinister and suave playboy who marries the beautiful, vulnerable yet sensible Monica so he can get his hands on her money. Rona Anderson who offers an excellent performance as one of her many b-pic heroines plays a character who is completely different to the man she has married so we can see that the relationship will end in tears and the contrast between the two actors is excellent. Even here Fisher's direction is far more sophisticated than what we would usually expect for a second feature and he constructs the build up well giving it genuine suspense. His previous experience as an editor appears to have served him well since he moves the action along at a cracking pace. The plot holds our attention since once Millway is murdered - or is he? - we wonder what or whom will come along to wreck Oliveri's plans. Or will he actually succeed in getting rid of the lovely Monica and laying his hands on all that dough? That maintains our interest and the suspense even though it finally settles for a dodgy b-pic finale - well, sort of - it leaves one or two questions unanswered in the tradition of the most successful thrillers making it more satisfying and a bit less predictable than we might have expected. There is an amusing scene at a nightclub where Oliveri furthers his alibi by talking to his friends about the play he saw in the West End and there is a jazz musician (Gerry Levy) singing a number entitled "You're getting away with murder, but you can't get away from me" in the background, which carries a genuine charge of irony and those lyrics could come back to haunt him later on.

Very Philomel Cottage, very Suspicion... The leads are fine, and so are the set-ups - nightclub, sleazy flat, expensive house in the stockbroker belt - even the glimpse we get of Milway's flat with its midcentury modern furniture and exposed stone wall. However, scenes are set up only to end abruptly. The running time is so short there is no time for, for example, the bridge players to exchange banter, the charlady to say more than "You ought to eat something, madam", the nightclub habituées to say and do a bit more. As someone points out - it is all resolved too quickly. Couldn't they at least have padded out the moment when Milway tells his story to the police - couldn't the cops have been a bit more skeptical?

There's a clever moment, though, when Oliveri gets Rona to leave him everything.

Agatha Christie and Francis Iles should really have got a screen credit.