The Hundred Hour Hunt (1952) User Reviews

Stock British "B-movie" - a thriller with a cause...

[jessieanchor · 6/10 · 13 August 2007]

Portmanteau story regarding plight of a critically ill child, stricken with Leukaemia. She has but days to live, she needs a blood transfusion for 3 pints of blood, but needs this within days or she will die. The race is on to find suitable donors - complicated by her extremely rare blood group.

The caring doctor teams up with a wily Scotland Yard detective, and they meet various sections of society in the hunt for their men.

Notable for an appearance by former World Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion - Freddie Mills.

A stock black and white "B-movie", with some interesting twists and turns before we reach the climax.

Slice-of-life Brit thriller

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 10 March 2015]

EMERGENCY CALL is a film that takes an old premise, involving a sick and ailing child who desperately needs to be saved by a transfusion of rare blood, and uses it as a basis for a film which explores working class life in London in the early 1950s. It's an intriguing little portrait of its time, depicting a bygone era populated by racial tension, corrupt boxing promoters, and criminals desperately trying to cover up their past crimes. The film is episodic in nature and hampered by the constraints of a low budget, but not without interest for fans of the genre.

The cast includes Jack Warner (TV's DIXON OF DOCK GREEN) playing, you guessed, a policeman, and real-life boxing champ Freddie Mills playing, well, a boxer. There are also roles for those who would achieve later fame, including Thora Hird and Sid James. The film shrugs off the social commentary about two thirds of the way in, ending up as a police procedural thriller with an effective climax. Not great, but there's still plenty of interest here.

A good thriller

[allanstewart-469-609700 · 7/10 · 5 February 2019]

I found this film on "Talking Pictures" and was pleasantly surprised by a story that moved along well, held the attention with some well-wrought tension and drama and also had believable characters from a broad cross-section of British life in the early1950s. The story is about a search for three donors with a very rare blood group who can help to save the life a little girl - she's dying of a very rare leukaemia and desperately needs a transfusion to save her. It manages a to create a slice of post war British life with almost every character bringing in a new angle to the story. One particular characterisation caught my attention that was the very sympathetic (NOT some silly caricature) treatment of a black stoker who is refusing to give his blood and is also refusing to say why. The character's name was George Robinson and he was played by Earl Cameron (who is at the time of writing still alive 101 years old! and was known as a story teller on the Children's TV programme: Jackanory) The refusal stems from his perception that his "black blood" would be regarded as not being as good as "white blood" - he is persuaded otherwise, which for those days in the UK was quite a strong and positive message (there was indeed quite a bit of racism about in those times too!). There are some very good bits of casting and acting with the dependable Jack Warner playing a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector, Anthony Steel as the young hospital doctor, Sidney Tafler as the nasty crook, Sid James as the boxing manager and (to my astonishment!) Freddie Mills (formerly a real-life world boxing champion) giving a good acting performance as a boxer (also one of the potential blood donors). All in all, this is a film that I enjoyed and would watch again.

A top class picture for a Butcher's production.

[jamesraeburn2003 · 16 December 2015]

Scotland Yard's Inspector Lane (Jack Warner) fights against the clock to find three potential donors for a dying child who urgently requires three pints of an extremely rare blood group. The donors include a boxing champion (Freddie Mills), a black sailor (Earl Cameron) who is reluctant to donate because during the Second World War a Nazi soldier refused his blood and he attributed the incident to racism and, the third, is a murderer on the run whom the police track down in Brighton. But, the man is shot and he is faced with the choice of donating and dying at the scene or, if he refuses, will surely die anyway as he will be tried and hanged for a murder he committed several years before.

An above average offering from poverty row studio Butcher's Films who churned out a countless number of British b-pics throughout the 1950's and early 1960's. Some of which were so awful they showed Britain's film industry at a very low ebb. But, there were one or two exceptions and this stands as one of them. It got elevated to 'A' feature status at the time. Directed by Lewis Gilbert who would go on to become a top director of such films as Reach For The Sky; he succeeds in wringing considerable suspense out of some of the situations - especially the hunt for the murderer on the run - and the stellar cast includes Jack Warner (Dixon Of Dock Green) who is perfectly comfortable in the role of the Scotland Yard inspector and Sid James is in there too perfectly cast as a dodgy boxing promoter and Eric Pholmann as a rival promoter would go on to voice the faceless Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the early Bond films. As was usually the case for these type of films, however, the plot turns are pretty predictable. Nonetheless, it is a top class picture for a Butcher's production and the studio remade the film in 1962 as Emergency with b-movie veteran Francis Searle directing.

A Break From The Routine Murders

[boblipton · 6/10 · 7 January 2019]

Joy Shelton brings her young daughter, Jennifer Tafler, to the hospital. The child is dying of a rare form of leukemia. She needs a complete transfusion or she will die in barely more than four days. Unfortunately, she has an even rarer blood type. There are only three people in Britain who have the same blood type. One is Freddie Mills, a has-been boxer who disappeared after his manager, Sid James, told him to take a dive. The second is Earl Cameron (still alive in his 102nd year as I write this), a seaman who refuses to give his blood. The third is Geoffrey Hibbert, wanted for murder and in hiding. Jack Warner is the Scotland Yard inspector leading the search. He says it's a nice change from his usual murder beat.

It's a well-made movie, with the professionals all doing their jobs calmly, and the laity showing flares of temperament as Miss Tafler, whose father, Sydney Tafler, has a sizable role, sinks towards death. There is mordant humor to take the audience's mind off the impending tragedy: Henry Hewitt, whose wife is identified as one of the possible donors; he does not realize she is dead. Eric Pohlman and Thora Hird are on hand, welcome faces in this drama. Sometimes the police are trying to help the living..... something the gangsters and fishwives (Miss Hird runs a chippie!) don't always recognize.

"Jump the lights Bert, I'm in rather a hurry"

[hwg1957-102-265704 · 7/10 · 21 December 2020]

A sick girl with a rare blood group needs a transfusion from three people with the same group, but finding them is not easy. There's a boxer, a sailor and a man in hiding after after a crime. The authorities do their best to locate them but will they succeed? A quietly gripping film with emotion and drama but nothing over the top. Director Lewis Gilbert and co-writer Vernon Harris weave the various narrative strands together seamlessly and Wilkie Cooper's cinematography is perfect.

The main focus is on the mother, the doctor and the policeman but they are surrounded by a host of interesting characters, played by a fine gallery of British character actors. Some only have short scenes but they all make their mark. The 1950's was the golden age of British support acting and part of the pleasure of watching movies like this.

Competent if uninspired period piece

[RobW · 4/10 · 9 June 2000]

Competent if slightly stodgy (and now rather dated) British B-movie. The plot centres around a child critically ill in hospital who needs a blood transfusion to save her life. Unfortunately she has a rare blood group, so Scotland yard are called in to track down possible donors. This is used as a framework for a collection of little stories about life in London ca 1950 rather in the style of "The Blue Lamp". Jack Warner and Sid James as a boxing manager (who could be a decent character actor when he tried) do a reasonable job at keeping the plot afloat. Now mainly of interest as a social document.

How can one be negative about this?

[Andrew_S_Hatton · 9/10 · 13 August 2007]

Archetypal film that shows post war Britain as it is understood by those of us who grew up with Dixon of Dock Green, Freddie Mills, Sydney Tafler and Sid James writing our scripts. Wonderful stuff with a conclusion we know will be solved just before the film ends, so we can all go to bed knowing that all is right with the world and we are being protected by our new NHS and police force who do no wrong.

Such a shame we learnt the truth by the eighties by which time we had grown up and discovered how complex the world really is, but oh how we can recall the kindly usherette showing us to our seats in a darkened cinema as we all felt part of the same Britain for just an hour and a half before the new Queen was crowned. Wonderful evocative stuff or a load of old clap trap depending on your take on the world?

Almost documentary blood transfusion thriller

[clanciai · 10/10 · 20 January 2021]

You can't get much closer to reality than in describing and recounting the circumstances and very critical instances in the emergency of having a very short time to save a child's life with the rarest possible blood group, for which three donors are needed, and the difficulties in getting them in time are constantly towering here, even mounting to criminal complications and crooked business in the field of boxing. The realism is total, the film is aptly scripted with impressing accuracy from both the views of the hospital and Scotland Yard, and the human destinies involved are gripping, especially the last one, a compromised case of innocence. The acting is equally superb, no one is overacting, everyone is natural and neutral, and they are all on equal footing. There are many films like this from England around these years, and they are generally all reliable and impeccably realistic, like Italian neorealism, no matter how prominent actors are in them. This is better and more exciting than most thrillers, and yet it is all fictional, but the reality is too convincing not to raise a certainty with the viewer that it must all be taken more or less directly from reality.