Dr. Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress

This slim little movie was based on a British radio mystery series, with the main character of Dr. Morelle depicted as an all-knowing Sherlock Holmes-type detective.

This film is a pretty routine mystery, no better or worse than many. But it was spoiled for me by its "comedy relief", which consists of Dr. Morelle browbeating his female secretary with all sorts of very caustic epithets and comments about how stupid and useless she is. This is a running gag and goes on for the entire film. I'm sure male viewers chuckled and laughed at this abuse of a woman back in its day, but seeing it today, it is very uncomfortable to watch.

Times do indeed change in what constitutes entertainment.

Julia Lang discovers that her friend, heiress Jean Lodge has gone missing. She goes to investigate at the charmingly named Barren Tor in Devonshire, disguising herself as the new housemaid. There she finds Miss Lodge's wheelchair-bound stepfather, a creepy butler, and a stalwart young fiance. Finding herself out of her depth, she calls her regular employer, psychiatrist Valentine Dyall for aid.

It's another of the movie adaptations of BBC radio programs that Hammer tried in the late 1940s. This one is based on a series written by Ernest Dudley. It was a long-running series, initially starring Dennis Arundell. In the 1950s, the role was taken by Cecil Parker. There were also short stories, and even a stage play.

THe movie itself is a stereotyped potboiler, distinguished only by Dyall's characterization as the annoyingly perceptive Morelle.

This is quite a decent little conspiracy mystery. "Cynthia" (Jean Lodge) is the eponymous heiress who has been living in the care of her controlling, wheelchair-bound, step-father "Kimber" (Philip Leaver - reminded me a little of Francis L. Sullivan). When she announces that she wishes to marry; he has to act and she promptly disappears. Her friend "Miss. Frayne" (Julia Lang) goes to investigate and puzzled by all of this, summons her employer - the hypnotist "Dr. Morelle" (Valentine Dyall) to get to the bottom of everything... It's a fairly routine mystery, and as it is told via retrospective we have little jeopardy - but it is still quite enjoyable to watch Lyall in full pomp and there are, as usual, some lovely scenes from Hugh Griffiths as the amiable, but scatty butler "Bensall". It's very much of it's time, this film - there is a condescension from Lyall to Lang that's over-egged a bit, but it doesn't spoil it too much - it's just a quickly paced, sometimes humorous, crime thriller that easily kills an hour - without killing anything else!

Although this is a rather threadbare effort it does have a fairly entertaining and well thought out ending.The voice of Valentine Dyall permeates the whole film giving the clue to the film's origins.At that time many BBC radio programmes were being turned into films,often with unlikely titles such as The 20 Questions Murder Mystery.I have to say that I cannot remember a similar climax when the tables were so neatly turned on the murderer with no less than two further twists giving a very neat and ingenious ending>Too often endings seemed contrived and unsatisfactory ,but such concerns definitely do not apply to this thriller.

Often called the "British Vincent Price," Americans have heard Valentine Dyall, even if his name and face are unfamiliar. His voice was used in countless films, TV and radio programs where his face (though handsome) was not seen.

Dyall's starring role as the hypnotist, Dr. Morelle, is the main reason to see "Dr. Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress." The plot is unexceptional, and the acting of most everyone else rather pedestrian. One exception is Hugh Griffith, (ten years before he won a Best Supporting Oscar for "Ben-Hur"), as the daft butler, Bensall.

Greedy, wheelchair-bound Samuel Kimber (Philip Leaver) wants to bump off his stepdaughter, Cynthia (Jean Lodge) to gain her inheritance. She wants to marry a struggling young author, escape the clutches of her stepfather and keep her money.

Heiress disappears between the old manor house she inhabits with her stepfather and Bensall and the author's humble cottage.

And the story takes off from there. Dr. Morelle's secretary, the aptly named Miss Frayle (Julia Lang), infiltrates the old dark house to see what she can find out about the disappearance of her friend.

Along the way, she makes an unlikely ally whose untimely demise hampers her effort to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, Dr. Morelle assumes several names and identities as he tries to ferret out the truth from Mr. Kimber and the young author.

Everything is wrapped up neatly in just over an hour, with a predictable ending arrived at by slightly unconventional means.

I've already given "The Case of the Missing Heiress" more cyber ink than it warrants, but there is something that sets this fairly ordinary late-40s Hammer thriller apart, and that is the commanding presence of Valentine Dyall.

The London-born Dyall (1908-1985) conquered every medium in his nearly fifty-year career: stage, film, TV and especially radio where his mellifluous voice was most famously heard in Britain in the 1940s as the star of "The Man In Black." Dyall's voice was heard much later in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as that of Deep Thought.

In between there were a lot of spears to be carried, manors to be lorded over, and dead bodies for the trench-coated Mr. Dyall to hunch over. If his work in this unprepossessing little film is any indication of the overall quality of his work, I'm apt to look for his name in credits from now on.