● CORNELL WOOLRICH – Black Alibi. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1942. Paperback reprints include: HandiBook #14, 194?; Jonathan Press, 194?; Collier, 1965; Ballantine, 1982.

● THE LEOPARD MAN. RKO Radio Pictures, 1943. Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell. Based on the novel Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich. Producer: Val Lewton. Director: Jacques Tourneur .

   So it was time to get back to the Classics, and in my book, that’s Cornell Woolrich. Black Alibi isn’t terribly well-structured — it consists mainly of a growingly repetitious series of rather lengthy vignettes of young girls going to meet untimely and violent ends at the hands of…. well, it’s a Mystery, isn’t it? — but it contains some of Woolrich’s richest prose, and that’s saying quite a lot.

   Alibi offers scene after scene of startling imagery, deft metaphor, and everything else that makes the words a pleasure to read, even when the book itself gets a bit tiresome.

   Black Alibi was filmed by the Val Lewton unit at RKO just a year after the book came out, and Woolrich never found an auteur more attuned to his peculiar sensibilities than Val Lewton. Lewton made “B” movies and Woolrich wrote pulp, but both men were compulsive poets, and The Leopard Man is one of the more meticulous Woolrich-to-film adaptations: bits of dialogue, trifling incidents, and minor characters from the book all show up on the screen under Lewton’s careful supervision and the classy direction of Jacques Tourneur, which seems to capture even the metaphors from Woolrich’s novel.

   Given the faithfulness of this film, I’ve sometimes wondered about the exact contributions of the screenwriters, Ardel Wray and Edward Dein. It takes a certain amount of talent not to mess  up a good story when putting it across the screen, so I can understand Wray’s contribution: she worked on a couple other Lewton films and a better-than average series entry, The Falcon and the Coeds. But I wonder what “additional dialogue” may have been contributed by Edward Dein, a writer whose dubious credits include Jungle Woman, Calypso Joe, and Shack Out on  101. Just one of those unexplained mysteries of The Cinemah, I guess.

IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Switzerland,-West Germany-Spain, 1958. Original title: Es Geschah am Hellichten Tag. Heniz Ruhmann, Michel Simon, Gert Frobe, Maria Rosa Salgado, Anita Von Ow. Screenplay by Friedrich Durrenmatt (his story), Hans Jacoby, and Director Ladislao Vaja.

   This offbeat German noir film is based on Swiss novelist Friedrich Durrenmatt’s novel The Pledge, but takes off from the main conceit of that novel in some interesting directions of its own as a powerful suspense film about the nature of obsession, guilt, and the lengths a man will go to accomplish his ends.

   It opens in the woods outside a small town where Jacquier (Michel Simon), a peddler, discovers a child’s body and flees to town and the local pub where he calls chief investigator Matthai (Heniz Ruhmann) who once treated him well.

   Matthai is on his last day before a new important job in Jordan, but calls out the authorities and they are guided to the body of the girl by Jacquier who in short order becomes the chief suspect, Matthai only saving his neck from angry locals when he points out that all who claim they saw Jacquier in the woods are just as much suspects as he is.

   Matthai isn’t so sure about Jacquier’s guilt though. One of the girl’s friends shows him a picture the victim drew of her friend ‘the giant” a man she met in the woods and befriended. Surely a fairy tale, but …

   When Jacquier commits suicide under the relentless police interrogation Matthai is not sure he was guilty but the police are happy to close the case and that of other girls who died similarly over the last four years.

   Not Matthai though. He continues to investigate and begins to put together a picture of the killer, a man henpecked by his bitter Mother who strikes out in frustration with a razor against the children he has targeted.

   Following a trail of clues Matthai closes in on the killer, but knows he can never trap him without the ideal bait, and in a small town he finds it in a lonely little girl like the ones killed before and her widowed mother, Frau Heller and Annemarie (Maria Rosa Salgado and Anita von Ow) . Taking a job at a gas station and living with the mother and daughter he begins to lay his trap.

   By this point we know the killer is one Schott, a henpecked giant (Gert Frobe) who lives with his cruel mother.

   Vajada skillfully inter-cuts scenes of Schott and Matthai almost encountering each other, Matthai filling Schott’s tank with gas as Schott watches Annemarie in his side mirror, the two men passing on the road, all building tension as Annemarie and Schott, her “Magician” meet in the woods and the pressure on Schott from his mother pushes him closer to action and the straight razor in his bath he has used before.

   Even with Matthai finally seeing Schott he still has to catch him in the act, but that means using Annemarie as bait, something he cannot do because he has come to care for the child.

   Matthai plants a doll dressed like Annemarie in the woods like the little girl Jacquier found, but Annemarie escapes from her room and heads for the woods to meet with her “Magician…”

   Heinz Ruhmann was a beloved German star in the period perhaps best known here for his films playing Georges Simenon’s Maigret that were dubbed in English and shown on American television in the Sixties. His humanity, gentle screen presence, and surprising strength made him a popular Maigret, but also lend themselves to the drama in the far more complex Matthai, a rather cool character whose cold calculations are complicated by his feelings for a lonely child.

   This is supposedly the role that got Gert Frobe the role of Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film. Around this time he would be introduced in more familiar form to American audience as the police inspector in Fritz Lang’s 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and its sequel. A hero of the War who smuggled many Jews out from under the Nazis, Frobe would have a successful career in the West in films such as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Bloodlines despite not speaking English.

   Durrenmatt’s The Pledge was filmed with Jack Nicholson in a form much closer to the book. The author was a noted playwright and novelist perhaps best known among Mystery fans for his Inspector Barlach novels, one of which became a film with Jon Voight and Robert Shaw. His novels and plays often deal with mystery and suspense, but seldom in a straightforward manner. He is far more interested in the psychology of his characters and the paradox involved than straight detection or suspense alone. He’s an extremely important writer, if not always an easy one, and this does justice to his work.

   That this film captures so much of the feel of his work despite having to play to a somewhat more standard model is one of its strengths. Evocatively filmed and well acted, particularly by Ruhmann, Simon, and the mute Frobe it plays like the best of film noir with all that implies about flawed wounded human beings, and how they sometimes destroy each other. It is a powerful and disturbing film that can jolt more with the image of a dead child’s hand emerging from a pile of leaves than a hundred gory horror films, a single cry of rage from Frobe when Schott realizes he has been tricked tells more than pages of dialogue about this repressed monster.

   I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s hardly a lost film, but one that doesn’t get the kind of attention many of its French and American cousins do in the genre, and that is a shame. You really owe it to yourself to find it on YouTube (there are several versions, but the one by Old Movies B/W and Colour Simonbartbull has English subtitles and is a clear looking print).

   See this one. It is a classic.

THE STEEL KEY. Eros Films, UK, 1953. Terence Morgan, Joan Rice, Raymond Lovell, Dianne Foster. Director: Robert S. Baker.

   International playboy and thief Johnny O’Flynn (Terence Morgan) tries to prevent criminals from stealing a secret formula for processing hardened steel, called the Steel Key, and discovers that one of the scientists involved has been murdered while another, Professor Newman (Esmond Knight) has died of apparently natural causes.

   His investigation leads him to a sanatorium, run by one Dr Crabtree (Colin Tapley), and a captured scientist forced to reproduce the formula. On the way, Johnny meets Newman’s glamorous, younger wife Sylvia (Dianne Foster) and rescues pretty nurse Doreen (Joan Rice), after the kidnappers try to kill her. Inspector Forsythe of Scotland Yard (Raymond Lovell) is also on the scent, but is intent on arresting Johnny for the crime.

   This British second-feature is a great deal of fun and one of my favourites from the era. It has much in common with other adventure-thrillers featuring a suave and witty hero. This may have been deliberate as it was originally intended to involve The Saint, but producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman could not secure the rights to the character. (They would eventually, of course, make a phenomenally successful television series with Roger Moore in the role.)

   Its Saintly beginnings, however, remain obvious to all as O’Flynn is considered to be a thief who claims a reward for any boodle he recovers and spars wryly with a portly inspector who would love to put him behind bars. It’s basically Simon and Inspector Teal, with all the hi-jinks that implies.

   With his chiselled features, slick dark hair and mischievous glint in his eye, actor Terrence Morgan makes for a likeable and charismatic hero as Johnny O’Flynn. Amid all the action, there are some good dollops of humour in here too. There is, of course, the constant cat-and-mouse game with the police, but there are also moments which border on farce (never a bad thing, in my book) as Johnny pretends to be one of the scientists involved with Newman. Indeed, nurse Doreen never discovers his real name and it is uttered only a handful of times in the whole film.

   The finger of accusation moves frequently from one suspect to another, but this a pacey adventure and not a drawing room whodunit, though the revelation does come as a surprise. The only criticism I would make is the inclusion of three scientists (one who is only referred to), which seems a bit messy to me.

   Morgan’s career started out promisingly with roles in Olivier’s Hamlet and Captain Horatio Hornblower with Gregory Peck, but he quickly slid into B-films and became typecast as villains, and though a switch to television with The Adventures of Francis Drake was successful, it did not last. Fortunately, there does not seem to have been an unhappy ending for Morgan, as he left acting to run a hotel on the South-East coast of England for many years before becoming a property developer. He died in 2005 at the age of 83.

Rating: *****

THE DROWNING POOL. Warner Brothers, 1975. Paul Newman (Lew Harper), Joanne Woodward, Tony Franciosa, Murray Hamilton, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith, Linda Haynes, Richard Jaeckel. Based on the novel by Ross Macdonald. Director: Stuart Rosenberg.

   Well, for one thing, they changed to location from sunny, hot southern California to sultry, swampy Louisiana, that much I know. I’m not sure, but I think the facility where the title scene takes place fit in better in the book. It seemed to me that came from nowhere in the movie, but I’d have to watch the movie again to state that as a fact. I watched this movie when it first came out, and I thought I remembered it, but the only scene that came back to me was the one in the pool, with the water rising and rising and still rising, with Harper and his lady companion trying to keep their heads above water.

   Harper is hired by a former girl friend, Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), to find out who’s been blackmailing her about an affair she’s been having. It’s not her husband she’s worried about. It’s his mother who runs the estate where they live with an iron hand. When’s she found murdered, it’s the chauffeur who’s the immediate suspect. (He was also suspected of being the blackmailer.) A ruthless oil developer who wants the property is also involved.

   For a while after seeing this movie for the first time, I keep seeing Paul Newman as Lew Archer as I read the books. He’s very good in the role, but as time went on, the mental  image  I had of him gradually faded away. Joanne Woodward has a nothing part and makes very little of it. It was Melanie Griffith as her teenage sexpot daughter who made a bigger impression on me this time around.

   How much the story resembles the book I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. Considering it on its own, story-wise it doesn’t stack up all that much higher than many an episode of a PI show being shown on TV around the same time. It’s Paul Newman’s presence that makes it what is , though, and he’s quite good at it.
   

LONDON BY NIGHT. MGM, 1937. George Murphy, Rita Johnson, Virginia Field, George Zucco, Montagu Love, Leo G. Carroll, Eddie Quillan, J. M. Kerrigan, Leonard Mudie. Screenplay by George Oppenheimer, based on the play by Will Scott. Directed by Wilhelm Thiele. Streaming online here.

   Hollywood on the Thames strikes again in this superior little mystery from MGM starring George Murphy as Irish American reporter Michael Denis who has a nose for mystery even when he is trying to get away for his holiday in Paris with his nosy dog Jones.

   At his favorite pub for a last drink before leaving for his holiday, Murphy meets his friend Bill (Eddie Quillan with an Irish accent), a clerk for a local businessman, who is in love with vivacious crime obsessed barmaid Bessie (a scene-stealing Virginia Field). While Bill and Bessie sit outside and manage to drop some key exposition without doing it too obviously, they see a dark limping man with an umbrella enter Bill’s bosses business. They overhear a loud argument about money and when the Umbrella Man (as he will be branded) leaves Bill’s boss doesn’t answer from behind the locked door.

   They call on Denis, and he suspects foul play and calls in his friend Inspector Jeffers (George Zucco). When they force their way in, there is no one in the office and no exit other than the one Bill and Bessie watched the owner could have left by.

   Yup, we have a genuine locked room mystery here, and it proves a pretty good one, maybe not John Dickson Carr quality, though I imagine he would have approved, particularly of one vital clue everyone misreads.

   Then a policeman is fatally wounded by a man with an umbrella, and the businessman’s clothes are found in the Thames. Meanwhile a German friend of the businessman who played chess with him arrives and confirms the clothes belonged to his friend who failed to meet him that night.

   They also find a threatening note written in red chalk.

   Following a man he believes is the Umbrella Man, Denis intrudes on the home of Sir Arthur Herrick (Montagu Love) also on the square and meets Herrick’s beautiful daughter Patricia (Rita Johnson) butler Squires (Leonard Mudie), and nervous secretary Corey (Lep G. Carroll) and his suspicions are aroused.

   There is also a suspicious character who hangs about the pub that Jones is particularly aggressive toward.

   The film is set-bound and takes place on the square where the pub, the little shop, and Sir Arthur’s home are, and mostly takes place, as the title suggests, at night in the fog.

   Another murder follows, as the Umbrella Man strikes again, this time at the pub, then a note, again in red chalk, arrives extorting money from Sir Arthur or Patrica will die. Denis and Jeffers set a trap for the Umbrella Man who gets away after attacking a mail man, but Denis has stumbled on a clue that explains the disappearance of the businessman from a locked room with the only door under observation and who the mysterious Umbrella Man is.

   This is a fairly done mystery, though readers of this blog in particular will figure things out pretty quickly with the arrival of one performer (we can discuss him in any comments, if you want), and likely put the whole thing together, but it is a fair play mystery with clues misinterpreted and misleading, plus a seemingly mad killer who is quite mad and also much more clever than anyone thinks.

   Murphy is charming as usual, and his scenes with Johnson are believable in the romantic comedy mystery genre this represents. Quillan’s accent is a bit thick, but he is earnest and plays well off Field who steals all her scenes as a genuinely sexy zany barmaid.

   It’s nice to see Zucco get to play a lighter role and he does it quite well with something of the same droll humor as his Yard man in Douglas Sirk’s Lured, and the rest of the cast are all in fine form, though one is a little better and gets to stretch a bit, though I won’t give it away here by saying who.

   The clues are planted fairly here, and if, as IMDb suggests the play was never produced on stage, it’s a shame. It’s a barn burner, and quite entertaining with a solid mystery element and slight romantic comedy mystery overtones.

   This is a pleasant mystery comedy, attractively cast, mostly fairly played, and unlike many of its kind one you would probably enjoy if you encountered it in print. It breaks no new ground, does nothing terribly original or surprising, but it is smart, playful, attractive, and enjoyable.

   Extra marks too for not letting the comedy relief or the dog overwhelm the simple thrills. There are several places where it could go wrong, one where it might even seem about to, and manages to keep on track and keep focused on the goal.

   I’ve seen quite a few mystery films with greater ambition that don’t hold together half as well as this does. London by Night may be a bit foggy and dangerous, but it’s a place worth visiting.

MIRAGE. Released: July 7, 1965. Running time: 109 minutes. Cast: Gregory Peck (David Stillwell), Diane Baker (Shela), Walter Matthau (Ted Caselle), Kevin McCarthy (Josephson), Jack Weston (Lester), Leif Erickson (Crawford Gilcuddy), George Kennedy (Willard), Robert H. Harris (Dr. Broden), Anne Seymour (Frances Calvin), House B. Jameson (Bo), Hari Rhodes (Lt. Franken), Neil Fitzgerald (Joe Turtle). Producer: Harry Keller. Writers: Peter Stone (screenplay) and Howard Fast (uncredited; based on his 1952 novel Fallen Angel, as by Walter Ericson). Director: Edward Dmytryk.

   David Stillwell has managed to do the impossible, at least according to a nervous psychologist who presumably knows about these things: While David has spent the last two years living and working in New York, he has absolutely no memory of any of it. “Impossible!” says the shrink that he has desperately sought out; amnesia can last, at most, maybe two months — not two years!

   But when a nervous pro-wrestling-addicted schmo practically kidnaps him in his apartment, and a big plug ugly starts taking shots at him in the park, and people he knows — or thought he knew well — either wind up dead or are plotting to kill him, it occurs to David Stillwell that he will have to retrieve his lost memories — and fast! Unknown to him, buried deeply in his subconscious is the knowledge of something — and this is no exaggeration — that could completely change the world forever . . . .

   There are a lot of twists and turns in this movie, too many to detail, but it zips along at a good pace. By telling the story in a nonlinear way with lots of flashbacks that at first don’t make much sense, the viewer is kept as much in the dark as the main character about just what the heck is going on. The writers lean heavily on Gregory Peck’s amiable charisma to keep the audience sympathetically engaged in his nightmare.

   The production also makes full use of late autumn scenes in New York’s streets and Central Park, and although the film is a full-length theatrical release, it seems wise for them to shoot it in muted black and white in order to give it a noirish feel.

   The aforementioned “nervous psychologist” is played by Robert H. Harris, one of those familiar faces from mainly ’50s and ’60s network TV that you might have trouble attaching a name to. The IMDb awards Harris 130 credits, including a long run in The Goldbergs (51 episodes), Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Court of Last Resort (23 episodes), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (8 episodes), Perry Mason (7 episodes), with sporadic appearances in dozens of shows and movies as late as The Six Million Dollar Man in 1977.

PostScript: The one copy of Fallen Angel currently on AbeBooks has an asking price of $3500.

HUE AND CRY. Ealing Studios, UK, 1947. Fine Arts Films, US, 1951. Alistair Sim, Harry Fowler, Valerie White, Jack Warner, Paul Demel, and a mess of kids. Written by T.E.B. Clark. Directed by Charles Crichton.

   Very uneven in tone, and all the better for it.

   After defeating the Axis, post-war England faced a very different problem. Thousands of children, left with single parents, and largely unsupervised, roamed the bombed-out city, doing what kids do: playing in the ruins, getting in trouble of all sorts, looking for fun or maybe just the Better World their parents fought and sometimes died for.

   This is the unlikely backdrop for T. E. B. Clark’s tale of mystery and adventure, and it’s a credit to all concerned that Hue and Cry neither shrinks from nor pontificates on the pervasive squalor. Rather, the filmmakers accept it as a fact of life — much as the children do — and go on about telling a ripping yarn.

   The plot hangs on the notion that kids of all ages, as the saying goes, are hooked on reading the adventures of Detective Selwyn Pike in a post-war penny-dreadful titled Trump (The mind reels with clever comments, all regretfully omitted.) until a lad in his late teens (Harry Fowler, awkward, charmless, and perfect for the part.) finds a correlation between incidents in the weekly episodes and a real-life crime wave. Someone is sending coded messages inside the stories!

   Duly inspired by Detective Pike’s example, Fowler and friends set out to catch the criminals, and it’s Buddies vs Baddies — with some surprisingly grim moments tossed in among the general merriment.

   Top-billed Alistair Sim shows up for about five minutes of screen time as the timorous author of the stories, a part that suits him so well I really wish writer Clark had given him something funny to say.

   But it’s the minors who carry this thing anyway, in scenes that lurch from kiddie stuff — like forcing a confession from a hard-boiled dame by scaring her with a mouse — to grim moments fleeing in a swampy sewer, then stalking and being stalked through a bombed-out tenement.

   It all culminates in an all-out attack by the kids on the crooks — later borrowed for The Good Humor Man (1950) —  as the children of the city descend upon the racketeers in a pitched and well-choreographed battle, intercut with moments of grim suspense as our boy-hero struggles with the master criminal in a tottering ruin that exemplifies the post-war disorder perfectly.

   But there’s a moment that will stay with me even longer than all this. Just a scene of children playing, and one of them, perched atop pile of rubble, gleefully, endlessly, aping the sound of bombs dropping.

OPERATION DIPLOMAT. Nettlefold Films, UK, 1953. Guy Rolfe, Lisa Daniely, Patricia Dainton, Sydney Tafler, Ballard Berkeley. Story by Francis Durbridge. Director: John Guillermin.

   Surgeon Mark Fenton (Guy Rolfe) is leaving St. Matthew’s Hospital in London one evening when an ambulance pulls up and a nurse jumps out. Urgently, she tells him that there is a patient on board who needs his help, yet when he steps inside there is only an armed man (Sydney Tafler).

   Fenton is escorted to a secluded house where he is instructed to operate on an unknown male with the assistance of a disgraced doctor named Schröder (Anton Diffring) and a woman (Lisa Daniely) whose dark eyes peek bewitchingly over a surgical mask. The patient is half-conscious at first and mutters deliriously about a “golden valley”.  Afterwards, Fenton’s drink is spiked and he later awakes on a park bench.

   Determined to forget the incident, he returns to the hospital, where he encounters a woman with the same distinct eyes as the one who worked alongside him the night before. He demands she visit him at his flat that evening – yet she doesn’t turn up. Instead, within minutes of arriving home, he receives two other, separate visitors: Colonel Wyman of the Foreign Office (Eric Berry), who asks about Schröder, and then Schröder himself.

   Apparently, the patient was Sir Oliver Peters, the chairman of the United Western Defence Committee, known as “the man who knows all the secrets”. A bullet makes things even more alarming, yet Inspector Austin of Scotland Yard (Ballard Berkeley) is suspicious of Fenton and his tale of abduction, death, and disappearing diplomats, forcing the surgeon to mount his own investigation.

   The only clues are “the golden valley” and a brand of cigarettes which repeatedly appear, yet with the aid of colleague Sister Rogers (Patricia Dainton), Fenton follows a treacherous trail to the kidnapped Sir Oliver, all the while wondering just who could be behind such a sinister, international scheme…

   One of several British television serials of the 1950s to be remade as a feature, Operation Diplomat was originally penned by Francis Durbridge, the popular and prolific thriller writer best known for the Paul Temple radio series. The character of Mark Fenton had already appeared in another such effort, The Broken Horseshoe, in which Robert Beatty had played the part for cinemas.

   Here, the tall, tanned and almost skeletally gaunt Guy Rolfe leads, and he makes for a likeable, though somewhat saturnine, amateur sleuth trying desperately to keep track of events. The audience will sympathise, as the mystery in this one is particularly tangled. A couple of things could have been clarified, but all the information is mostly present (or at least can be intuited).

   The pace is the selling point, with compelling developments occurring every ten minutes or so, as may be expected from something adapted from a serial – particularly one from Durbridge, whose tried-and-tested tropes appear again in an every-man hero, a cryptic word clue, casual and quite accidental conversations which turn out to be crucial, and a culprit apparently picked at random from an unwieldy stock of suspects.

   The seventy minutes not only go by swiftly but the cast make it even better. Berkeley, later to become familiar to British audiences as the muddle-minded Major in John Cleese’s legendary sitcom Fawlty Towers, is on fine avuncular form as the inspector, while the ever-reliable Sydney Tafler is always a pleasure to see, and professional-foreigner Anton Diffring is briefly afforded something other than a sinister bad guy role. Look out, too, for Desmond Llewelyn (Q in the Bond films) as a silent extra at the end.

   Despite final dialogue teasing further adventures with the intrepid Mr Fenton, there was to be no other sequel. Durbridge wouldn’t create another recurring character until giving us TV’s Tim Frazer the following decade. A pity, as more fast-paced adventures would have been just what the doctor ordered.

Rating: ****

CRIME ON THE HILL. British International Pictures, UK, 1933. Sally Blane, Sir Nigel Playfair, Lewis Casson, Phyllis Dare, Anthony Bushell. Screenplay by Vera Allison, E. M. Delafield, Bernard Vorhaus, Michael Hankinson. Based on a play by Jack Celestin and Jack DeLeon. Directed by Bernard Vorhaus.

   This little sleeper does show its age, but is a handsomely shot and intelligent old fashioned Golden Age fair play mystery with several nice touches that add up to a fairly taut and effecting ending and a genuine Great Detective moment done as nicely as I have ever seen,  as a series of rapid flashbacks point out the things we may have missed or failed to properly give weight to, rather than a talky boring rehash of the case at a gathering of suspects.

   The fact that this is based on a play and not a book is probably to its great advantage, as the dialogue is fairly sharp, and all the cues are hit on time.

   The squire of a tidy little English village dies leaving his estate to his American ward Sylvia Kennett (Sally Blane), but from the start things start to go bad. Sylvia’s boyfriend Tony Fields (Anthony Bushell) won’t marry her because she is now rich, and then attractive middle aged friend Claire Winslow (Phyllis Dare) shows up with evidence she and the Squire were married, making her the heir.

   That’s no problem for Sylvia who can now marry Tony, but he still seems reluctant and is hiding something to do with the attractive maid.

   Worse yet, the villagers are gossiping suggesting murder even though the Squire was being treated by Dr. Moody (Sir Nigel Playfair) for a terminal heart condition, and eventually the gossip gets bad enough Scotland Yard shows up with an exhumation order, the result of which shows the Squire was poisoned, the doctor missing it because his heart medicine had a small amount of cyanide in it.

   Now unpleasant truths start coming out, and in short order Tony Fields finds himself arrested, tried, and convicted of murdering the old man, and as for the maid who was going to tell the police something when she was killed, it turns out she had his baby before he went off to University.

   Detective work here is in the hands of Vicar David Grey (Lewis Casson), hunting and fishing buddy of Dr. Moody, and an old friend of the family. Upset that his little demi Paradise is concealing murder and other darker sins, the Vicar finds himself playing reluctant sleuth when a passing remark by a visitor at the Manor during a local open house accompanying a yearly charity affair puts him on the path to the shocking and unsettling truth about the Squire and his murder.

   Replete with red herrings, colorful characters, alcoholic reporters, sensational headlines, flustered Scotland Yard men, dark secrets, darker revelations, a not too intrusive romance with a more interesting than usual couple, and a fine final set piece and beautifully shot little coda at the end this is an outstanding example of the form, and frankly works better and holds the interest better than many a better known mystery adaptation.

   Bernard Vorhaus’s direction and cinematography by Claude Friese-Greene are both outstanding. A nightmarish fair ground is a particularly good set piece.

   Only running an hour and three minutes, this one is well made with imaginative use of camera angles, camera tricks, and shadows to heighten the effect and dramatize the proceedings. The acting is better than usual and Casson as the unworldly but canny Vicar and Playfair his cynical medical friend are outstanding in what could easily have been merely comedy relief or preachy roles.

   The final scene has real power, is imaginatively shot, and will hold the attention of even the most jaded mystery viewer.

   You might find yourself comparing it to Marjorie Allingham’s Tiger in the Smoke in its portrayal of a truly good, but still interesting man confronted by human evil without losing his faith. I would have loved to have seen a Father Brown movie this well done.

NO CLUE. Alliance, Canada, 2013. Brent Butt, Amy Smart, David Koechner, David Cubitt, Dan Payne, Kirsten Prout. Screenplay: Brent Butt. Director: Carl Bessai. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

   I wonder which mystery writer it was who was the first to open one of his books with a beautiful blonde babe walking into a PI’s office wanting him to do a job for her.

   As I say, I don’t know who it was, but the guy ought to have copyright the whole bit. If he had (were it possible), he’d have made a fortune by now.

   The problem in this case, for such an opening is the case, is that Leo Falloon is not a PI. His is the office down the hall, and the girl has made a mistake. He’s really a novelty pen salesman, the kind of pen that companies put their logos and slogans on, but when he hears the girl out – and she really is a beautiful blonde babe, so wouldn’t you? – and when she offers him real money – hell, yes, he takes the case.

   Her brother is missing, she says. He’s created a video game that’s brought in tons of money, and she thinks something is seriously wrong. Which of course it is, and equally of course is that Leo Falloon, a slightly overweight schlub of a man, discovers that he’s seriously in over his head, but in most comedic fashion.

   Luckily his best buddy Ernie (David Koechner, a long time regular on Saturday Night Live) is a devout aficionado of video games and is thus able to give Leo some pointers in the right direction. Of course all is not what it seems, and thus the heart of the tale that follows

   Brent Butt is a well-known standup Canadian comedian and the star of Corner Gas, a Canadian TV comedy about a small gas station slash convenience store in Dog River, smack dab in the middle of nowhere (Saskatchewan), if you have never seen, I recommend to you most heartily.

   On the other hand, as I’ve often said, humor is a funny thing. Most of the people who have written online reviews don’t get Butt’s kind of semi-sarcastic self-deprecating take on the world. Well, so be it. You can’t make people laugh if they their minds don’t work the way Brett Butts’ does, and mine, too, for that matter.

   What’s strange, though, is that many of the very same people thought the mystery was terrific – at least those of them who made it through to the end. The mystery’s OK, with all kinds of clues and things, but are they all tied up at the end? Not to me, they weren’t, but then again I didn’t mind. I had lots of everything else to keep me happy all the way through.