REVIEWED BY DAVID VINEYARD:


THE SPANIARD’S CURSE. Independent Film Distributors, UK, 1958. Tony Wright, Lee Patterson, Susan Beaumont, Michael Hordern, Ralph Truman, Henry Oscar. Screenplay by Kenneth Hyde, Ralph Kemper, Roger Proudlock. Story by Edith Pargeter. Directed by Ralph Kemper.

        “I call for the four of you to meet me before the Assizes of the Dying, and answer for your crimes …”

   The film opens with a pickpocket (mild mannered Henry Oscar) outside a theater (**) relieving a man of the contents of his overcoat pocket, then focuses on the date displayed in a store window. The titles run and as the date changes we cut to a headline that the jury is about to come in on the murder of an actress.

   We cut to the jury room where a military type bullies the meek foreman into a guilty verdict though the evidence is circumstantial and the crime calls for the death penalty, then under attack in England. The verdict is rendered and Justice Manton (Michael Hordern) delivers the death penalty.

   The accused man then speaks, reiterating his innocence, and uttering the curse of the title, a call for the Judge, the Council, the Foreman of the Jury, and the real killer to stand with him in a higher court, the “Assizes of the Dying,” and hear their judgement. In short, to die with him and be judged.

   Listening to the proceedings, are the judge’s newsman playboy son Charley (Tony Wright), his ward Margaret (Susan Beaumont), and the victim’s Canadian cousin Mark (Lee Patterson). When Mark and Margaret meet later in a tea shop they admit they think the convicted man, Stevenson, is innocent, but don’t plan to do anything about it until they witness the curse seeming to come to life … the jury Foreman is hit and killed by a car outside the court in front of them.

   There is not much more I can reveal without giving too much away. Stevenson dies the next morning, and the day after a piece of jewelry from the crime is pawned casting doubt on his guilt.

   One by one the characters are revealed, layers of deception stripped away, and suspicion cast on them even as Margaret and Mark, with help from crime reporter Charley, investigate the crime.

   The solution may be obvious to readers of this blog, but it is a good mystery, with numerous reasonable red herrings, more than a modicum of suspense, and that mysterious curse, the summons to the “Assizes of the Dying” that like one of John Dickson Carr’s logically explained impossible crimes, still has the hint of sulfur and brimstone long after the fact.

   The finale and last scene are the perfect wrap up to a solid sub-Hitchcockian suspense film with more than its share of fair play detecting.

   Solid performances bolster this excellent mystery film, especially from Wright who previously scored as the sociopathic Jack Havoc in the film version of Margery Allingham’s A Tiger in the Smoke.

   And for anyone who didn’t notice, the story is credited to Edith Pargeter, the well-known and respected English historical novelist better known to us as Ellis Peters of the Felse family and Brother Cadfael mysteries.

   Find this one, it’s a sleeper.

(**)   In the opening the play advertised at the theater where the pickpocket’s crime sets the plot in motion is “Meet Mr. Coleman” and a faint bit of music reminiscent of the famous theme from the play and film Meet Mr. Callaghan is heard as the pickpocket lifts his loot.

   That may or may not also be a nod to star Tony Wright who would play Peter Cheyney’s British Private Detective Slim Callaghan in two French films. If not, the coincidence is even more intriguing in a film where coincidence plays such a fateful role.