CROSS-UP, aka TIGER BY THE TAIL. Eros Films, UK, 1954. Larry Parks, Constance Smith, Lisa Daniely, Cyril Chamberlai, Thora Hird. Screenplay by John Gilling and Willis Goldbeck, based on the novel Never Come Back, by John Mair. Directed by John Gilling.

   American reporter John Desmond (Larry Parks) meets attractive Anna Ray (Lia Daniely) soon after arriving in London and is instantly attracted to her, but no sooner than they are alone together than she argues with him, pulls a gun and tries to kill him, and in the ensuing struggle, he kills her.

   Desmond is rightfully concerned no one would believe him, and being a stranger in London, he thinks he might get away with just fading into the woodwork, but he soon discovers he didn’t go unobserved and he is being stalked not only by the police, but by a mysterious criminal organization that Ray worked for.

   Along with beautiful Jane Claymore (Constance Smith) Desmond is on the run and some of the sprightly dialogue has the snap of North by Northwest between them if nothing else comes up to that level. I don’t want to oversell it, but it is pretty good for a quota quickie, moves well, and Parks and Smith make an attractive film team.

   In fact the only real problem with Cross-Up is that until 1990 (a faithful made for television film) it was the only film version of John Mair’s early War novel Never Come Back, an innovative and entertaining thriller of the pre-War era that ended up being the only novel by a young literary writer who died shortly in an RAF accident.

   In Mair’s novel the hero is an anti-hero, if there ever was one, who seduces a young woman who becomes overly enamored of him leading him to murder her, only to discover she was tied up with a spy organization that he ends up infiltrating and destroying, recruited as a secret agent and now a hero or at least useful fellow despite of the fact he is a murderer or maybe because of it.

   Aside from the modern plot, the writing in the book is extraordinary making Mair’s loss all the more a tragedy.

   Cross-Up is an entertaining if minor variation on Mair’s novel with an attractive cast and certainly Gilling is a work horse director (Mother Reilly and the Vampire, The Pirates of Blood River) and screenwriter whose name has come up here on more than one film.