Tangier: A criminal called Armstrong (Emerton Court) kills an Arab called Montez and steals a case containing valuable forgery plates. Enter Voss (Martin Benson), another master criminal who has also been hunting the plates down but was beaten by Armstrong who he deduces is fleeing to London by boat and train as he knows he hates flying. Voss had been working with two dangerous accomplices, Heinrich (Leonard Sachs) and Darracq (Derek Sidney), whom he plans to double cross by taking the plates to a buyer in Amsterdam and keeping the profits for himself. He orders Michelle (Lisa Gastoni), a displaced person and a survivor from Auschwitz death camp with a forged passport to fly to London ahead of Armstrong in order to lure him into a trap but she refuses. Naturally, Voss threatens to turn her in which would mean she would be deported so she has no option but to do as she is told. Victoria Station London: Armstrong puts the case into the Left Luggage office and then goes into a barbers shop for a shave. Enter an American stuntman called Chuck Collins (Robert Hutton) who also happens to be in there having a shave. Collins unwittingly becomes involved in the intrigue because he has an identical overcoat to that of Armstrong, which he takes by mistake when he leaves thinking that it is his own. Armstrong gives the manager of the salon the telephone number of the hotel he is staying at so Collins can bring him his coat, which he desperately needs to get back since it has the Left Luggage ticket in the pocket. Later Collins takes the coat along to the hotel but can get no response from Armstrong and soon after he has left, Armstrong falls from the window of his room and he is taken into hospital in a critical condition. London Soho: Collins goes to a club where he bumps into a close friend, Rex (Jack Allen), who is celebrating a £2,000 win on a boxing match; he drunkenly persuades Chuck to lend him his 'little black book of phone numbers' and Michelle's phone number falls out of Armstrong's coat pocket. Thinking it is the number of one of Chuck's lady friends he dials the number saying that he is a friend of Armstrong's from the Hotel Trieste in Tangier (the letter heading on the paper with her number) and this pulls Collins into the plot deeper as he is now introduced to Michelle who appears at the club. Unfortunately, Collins is now drawn to the attention of both Voss and Heinrich's thugs who now know he has the coat containing the Left Luggage ticket and this puts their lives in great peril...
A by the numbers thriller from b-pic specialists Butcher's Film Distributors. Director Lance Comfort - a quota quickie veteran - displayed his flair for making tense thrillers on small budgets with such films as Tomorrow At Ten (1962). Things start off well here with Comfort neatly staging the build up that is similar to Hitchcock in that it displays one of the master's favourite plot devices; an innocent person who is unwittingly drawn into dangerous circumstances way beyond their control and have to use their wits and common sense to fight their way out of it. In this case it is Collins (competently played by Robert Hutton whose Hollywood career never really got off the ground) who in innocently going about his routine business of getting a haircut or shave at his barber; is drawn unwittingly into life threatening circumstances over an overcoat that just happened to be an exact match for that of a master criminal's. Alas, Comfort is ultimately defeated by a script that becomes implausible and the obviously hectic shooting schedule, which means that suspense is badly lacking since there was little time to shoot the sequences in order to give them any tension: it was probably along the lines of "Action", "Cut, that's fine, right print it, next set-up". It certainly has that air about it and the climatic shoot out at a Surrey airfield is feeble and in any case if you have seen one of these films, you have pretty much seen them all and you can always work out how it will turn out with the obligatory happy ending in which the hero/heroine always come out on top in the end. These films are usually so predictable and in consequence, the suspense goes out of the window right from the start. Nevertheless, one can always enjoy these films as a pleasant reminder of an era of filmmaking that has long since disappeared and there are some wonderful b/w shots of Victoria station (as it looked then) and the Humber and Wolseley motorcars on display are very much of the period. All in all, if nothing else, it is pleasant, easy on the eye nostalgia.
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