The best bits are the views of the Thames and the docks in the days before shipping containers. I thought the briefly glimpsed femme fatale looked familiar - she turned up a couple of decades later in A Murder is Announced. She was no match for Miss Marple!
Talking Pictures warns against "racial attitudes that are of their time". A black couple do a caricatured apache dance, and the two actresses share a flat waited on by a small Javanese man speaking pidgin English in a high squeaky voice. He turns out to have the heart of a lion, however. But his presence makes me wonder if the script, too, was borrowed from America, where comic Oriental houseboys were once a staple.
How did they run that luxurious flat on their salaries? Another oddity about films of this era - when girls are not pin-ups, they are permanently dressed for the Queen's garden party. It was a frumpy fashion moment! Ursula Howells gets bumped off, and her place is taken by a girl with a permanent worried frown.
British noir, however bad, is usually redeemed by black and white photography and artistic lighting. The opposite is true here - the lights sometimes almost white out the actors' features.
Talking Pictures warns against "racial attitudes that are of their time". A black couple do a caricatured apache dance, and the two actresses share a flat waited on by a small Javanese man speaking pidgin English in a high squeaky voice. He turns out to have the heart of a lion, however. But his presence makes me wonder if the script, too, was borrowed from America, where comic Oriental houseboys were once a staple.
How did they run that luxurious flat on their salaries? Another oddity about films of this era - when girls are not pin-ups, they are permanently dressed for the Queen's garden party. It was a frumpy fashion moment! Ursula Howells gets bumped off, and her place is taken by a girl with a permanent worried frown.
British noir, however bad, is usually redeemed by black and white photography and artistic lighting. The opposite is true here - the lights sometimes almost white out the actors' features.