Mon 26 Dec 2016
Movie Review: SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR (1952).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[6] Comments
SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR. Lippert Films, US; Hammer Films, as Lady in the Fog; 1952. Cesar Romero, Lois Maxwell, Bernadette O’Farrell, Geoffrey Keen, Campbell Singer, Alastair Hunter. Based on the BBC radio serial Philip Odell: Lady in a Fog (1947), written by Lester Powell. Director: Sam Newfield.
This is another of those trans-Atlantic joint Lippert-Hammer productions that were mentioned in my recent review of Terror Street. (Follow the link and be sure to read the comments.) This time it’s Cesar Romero as the one American actor imported to give the film some name value.
Romero plays newspaper reporter Philip Odell, the title character of the radio series the movie was based on, not a Scotland Yard inspector at all. The radio series was popular enough that several more serials followed, through 1961, as well as five novels, all by author Lester Powell. On the radio, after missing his plane back to the US in the first series, Odell stayed on in England and became a PI, with Heather McMara as his trusty assistant (played by Bernadette O’Farrell in the movie).
It is McMara’s brother who is killed in the movie, the victim of a hit-and-run accident in the middle of a vicious London fog. She does not believe it was an accident, however, and when Scotland Yard’s Inspector Rigby (a minor role!) does not believe her, it is up to Odell to give her a most welcome helping hand.
The story — something to do with blackmail and a fatal fire thirteen years earlier — is fairly weak, and bolstering it with a few humorous scenes between Odell and a harried airline reservations clerk, for example, does not help. But Cesar Romero is his usual confident and suave self, with a ready smile whenever even when things begin to look dark, and this is what does help, giving the film a boost it otherwise would not have.
Also of note: Lois Maxwell, the future Miss Moneypenny, has a smallish but still significant role as the owner of a posh night club.
December 26th, 2016 at 10:15 pm
It was a fun one to catch at 2AM back when they had all night movies. I may remember this more fondly than it deserves though.
December 27th, 2016 at 9:34 am
I noticed Lois Maxwell prominent in the ads. She impressed me as yet another very capable actress who may have deserved a better career.
December 27th, 2016 at 1:53 pm
Even though Lois Maxwell had second billing, her role is a lot smaller than that of Bernadette O’Farrell, who played the girl that Cesar Romero came to the assistance of, and truth be told, had about twice the screen time. For a long time, I thought it was Lois Maxwell who was playing her, and I did my best to make her look like the Miss Moneypenny I remembered from the James bond films, which came along a few years later, but not quite succeeding.
December 27th, 2016 at 11:57 am
Transplanting American actors into British films to represent Britons has always seemed to be a dodgy proposition. Casting Gregory Peck as the title character in CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER (1951) just didn’t work for me; the movie itself is quite good, however, despite him — and St. Louis’s own Virginia Mayo, also miscast.
December 27th, 2016 at 1:36 pm
Your point is well taken, Mike, but in the cases of the two Lippett-Hammer films I’ve seen, this one and TERROR STREET, they made a point of working around the problem. In TERROR STREET Dan Duryea played an American flyer who returned from this country to find out what happened to his wife, who he had married and was still living in England.
In INSPECTOR, Cesar Romero played an American journalist trying to get back to the US, only to get tangled up in solving the mystery. In the radio serial, Odell was Irish and was trying to get back to Dublin.
Curt Evans reviewed another of these Lippert-Hammer collaborations on this blog a whole back, BLACKOUT, with Dane Clark.
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=28071
In that film, Clark plays “American [in England] out to solve a murder he wakes up to discover he’s suspected of having committed.”
I don’t know if this was the usual practice for these films, but on the evidence so far, I’d say that there’s a good chance that it was.
January 1st, 2024 at 1:53 pm
A lot of unintentional amusing fun to be spotted in this otherwise quite turgid run:
Romero looking like some 60 year old taking U.S. style complete charge of the ‘investigation’ and its ‘plodding’ / bewildered local plods – detectives especially, but also supposedly at that age, enchanting gorgeous, if totally outta her depth all innocence lost charming, Bernadette: his kiss to her in HER – this was the fifties! – car, is tantamount to arrogant male assault; as like her quite unfazed approach to the fact her brother is dead – (&right below her at beginning, as overseen by ‘seen it all before’ plod, too!). Then, as for how George deals with the mental institution orderly hidden behind the corridor corner .. is pre-Monty Python skit! Plus, the final chase end is of interest too as being set in the then UK still WW2 real bombed out buildings.
Oh, and, thinking of flight ‘arrangements’ of today, the ‘alternate’ route the ‘airline’ operative (Frank Birch) organises for him is a hoot in itself!