After years of wartime austerity, picture going resumed in Britain in a big way with the spectacular success of "The Wicked Lady", a Technicolour costume extravaganza. But strangely another genre to find favour was the psychological crime film and no actor could create quiet menace, the type that simmers under a surface of normality quite like Eric Portman. His smooth speech usually meant he was often able to fool everyone and get away with murder - until the last reel. In this film he plays Victor James Colebrook, a man who seems to hold everything under control but is still capable of violent outbursts. Only his mother seems worried about his moods - his father had been a notorious hangman whose mind snapped and ever afterwards was only happy when he was carrying out his grisly occupation. Victor has inherited the madness and as the film opens he is already stalking his latest victim. He is engaged to a sweet girl, Anne (Dulcie Grey) who works in a music store but the first scenes show her meeting someone else - a love struck bus driver, Jack (Derek Farr) and she has fallen for him as well.
The film explored many avenues, it was moodily atmospheric with director Laurence Huntingdon taking full advantage of Eric Portman's deep moods and mask like face. Has some very Hitchcockian moments, I wondered if Hitchcock had seen this movie when he planned "Strangers on a Train" and the eerie carnival and island sequences of that movie? In one scene Victor is in a mist enshrouded park with a naïve Irish girl but just after he kills her an American serviceman and his girl come across them. With the deepening fog he is able to shield his identity while offering the asked for matches. Then there was the orderly view of police procedure - Stanley Holloway in a rare straight role as the constable who makes the connection between Colebrook and his notorious father!!
With a climax resembling "The Blue Lamp" - the police pinpoint Colebrook and his next victim in Hyde Park and begin a no-nonsense public exodus of the grounds.
Dulcie Grey who had scored a critical success in her last film "They Were Sisters" was amazed to find herself dropped after the studio felt her portrayal was too realistic!! Soon after Eric Portman requested her to co-star with him in "Wanted for Murder" and, according to Miss Grey, he was a "darling"!!
Highly Recommended.
The film explored many avenues, it was moodily atmospheric with director Laurence Huntingdon taking full advantage of Eric Portman's deep moods and mask like face. Has some very Hitchcockian moments, I wondered if Hitchcock had seen this movie when he planned "Strangers on a Train" and the eerie carnival and island sequences of that movie? In one scene Victor is in a mist enshrouded park with a naïve Irish girl but just after he kills her an American serviceman and his girl come across them. With the deepening fog he is able to shield his identity while offering the asked for matches. Then there was the orderly view of police procedure - Stanley Holloway in a rare straight role as the constable who makes the connection between Colebrook and his notorious father!!
With a climax resembling "The Blue Lamp" - the police pinpoint Colebrook and his next victim in Hyde Park and begin a no-nonsense public exodus of the grounds.
Dulcie Grey who had scored a critical success in her last film "They Were Sisters" was amazed to find herself dropped after the studio felt her portrayal was too realistic!! Soon after Eric Portman requested her to co-star with him in "Wanted for Murder" and, according to Miss Grey, he was a "darling"!!
Highly Recommended.