Sick Product of a Sick System

Just perfect...

hyped garbage

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

*Possible Spoilers*A successful businessman called Lee Warren (Eric Portman) arrives home from a business trip in New York and discovers that his wife Vivien (Greta Gynt) has been having an affair with the barrister Richard Fenton (Dennis Price). Insanely jealous, Warren confronts Fenton and forces him to write a letter to Vivien terminating the affair before killing him by putting his head in the gas oven and arranging it to look like suicide. But, immediately afterwards, Warren learns that the affair had been over for sometime and his bid to make his crime appear to be suicide on account of that will seem ludicrous to the police. Vivien is a habitually unfaithful wife, however, and quickly found a new lover in Jimmy Martin (Maxwell Reed) so Warren frames him for the crime - killing two birds with one stone, you might say - removing suspicion from himself and getting rid of his wife's latest fancy man. Inspector Pembury (Jack Warner) promptly arrests Martin for the murder, but Vivien begs her husband to intercede on his behalf promising to be loyal to him from now on. Warren, an extremely intelligent and cunning man, devises a scheme to exonerate Martin and divert suspicion away from himself, but Pembury believes that Warren is the real killer only he cannot make anything stick against him unlike Martin who is awaiting trial and would likely be found guilty and face the gallows. However, Warren proves to be too clever for his own good when he underestimates his wife who, apart from being unfaithful is also extremely despising and devious, turns his own ingenious murder method against him. But, will a twist of fate also see her come unstuck?Elegantly mounted Gainsborough-produced murder thriller, which features a clever plot that succeeds in sustaining an audience's interest from beginning to end even though it does betray its stage origins from time to time. The screenplay co-authored by producer and executive producers Betty Box and Sidney Box and Peter Rogers (who would later produce the Carry On series) is well structured and enables the film's director, Arthur Crabtree, to generate some edge of seat suspense as we know that Eric Portman will eventually come unstuck, but we can never quite figure out how and the denouement when it comes is sufficiently satisfying and what has been a good build up hasn't lead to a big let down as too often happens in thrillers. Eric Portman has fun in the leading role as the husband displaying his character's pathological jealously as well as his arrogance and cunning with considerable gusto. Meanwhile, Greta Gynt offers a good performance as his unfaithful, despising but equally cunning wife who brings about his downfall as well as her own. She provides a vivid essay of a sociopath and the look on her face when she learns of Fenton's death and delights in the fact that she believes he committed suicide for her is priceless. It cannot be said that Portman and Gynt offer realistic portrayals as a couple trapped in a marriage from hell, however, since they are both over the top, but they sure are fun! The rest of the cast is no less impressive with Maxwell Reed, who is best known today because he was once married to Joan Collins, offering a better performance than one usually associates with him - he was often inclined to woodenness - as Gynt's lover accused of murder and Jack Warner offers the first of many portrayals as a police inspector, something that would bring him great fame as Dixon of Dock Green. The film benefits from the b/w cinematography of Stephen Dade, which gives the production a noirish feel that suits this kind of plot very well and a good sense of atmosphere and place as well.

The opening was one of the longest "prepare to die" speeches I have ever seen. Twenty minutes. Suave, cuckolded Eric Portman, visits then subdues his rival. Next, he tells how he learned of the man's bush brushing while he was overseas, and how he intends to kill him. Afterward, he spends another five minutes doing the deed and scattering the false trail. Then all the steam escapes, and the plot plods into police procedural. Turns out, hot, cheating wife (Greta Gynt) has a history of running around. She's already lined up her next man snack. Her husband needs roller skates to snuff everyone grazing her grass. Nice lighting, lot of Noir touches, though this is very much in the British mystery vein. Alright, at best. Dull and disappointing at worst.

Dear Murderer (1947)What a fabulous, complicated, feint and double feint movie about murder, attempted and otherwise. It's a very British feeling film, and though it has a film noir darkness (very dark, in my copy), it doesn't have the angularity nor the action of an American noir. More defining, though, is the deliberate parlor game feel to this very deadly situation. You might compare (if comparing is helpful) to the Joan Crawford "Sudden Fear" to make this most obvious.There is a lot of sparring with words here, very smartly written, and you have to pay attention as the intentions of the characters seem to be shifting all the time. You have to have the low key, steadfast, opaque, and clever detective of course, and the detective here is brilliantly all those things. And you have to have motive, which we have in abundance.And you need abundance since so much is going to go wrong here. Eric Portman is the key figure through it all, and he plays a jilted husband with laconic brilliance. His wife, and his wife's several lovers, are all excellent in support, each either surpassingly innocent at heart despite their adulteries, or really devious and selfish. It's beautifully constructed, and really a joy. But you have to pay attention. No getting up for popcorn here.

The 'perfect crime' novel, play, film became so ubiquitous that audiences tended to judge them on how credible the 'flaw' that proved the murderer's undoing and in this case it would struggle to rate three out of ten. Director Arthur Crabtree began behind the camera where he had credits on the like of Waterloo Road; he never really made it as a director but this effort begins well enough, boldly even for the time, because we are not told where Eric Portman has been prior to his entering his (we assume) flat, discovering several business cards signed Love Always and decides to confront and kill the sender. Only then does Portman reveal to Dennis Price that he has been in America for six months thus leaving Price clear to bed Portman's wife, Greta Gynt. He cons Price into writing a letter to Gynt that we - seasoned viewers of 'perfect crime' movies - spot as a suicide note, then coolly offs Price but before he can leave Gynt (who has a key, comes in with new lover, Maxwell Reed. This gives Portman a chance to frame Price for the crime and the 'flaw' comes when Gynt tells Portman she has loved him all along and begs him to clear Price without, of course, incriminating himself. HE AGREES. Yeah, you heard; a man who has found incriminating evidence of one lover (Price) and has had it confirmed by Price himself, then sees and hears with his own eyes and ears how Gynt behaves with a second lover, BELIEVES he pathetic story. There is absolutely no chemistry between Gynt and any of the three men (though to be fair we never see her with Price), Reed is as wooden as always and Jack Warner walks through the detective role, possibly mistaking it for the one he played in It Always Rains On Sunday that same year. On a Saturday night in 1947 at the local Odean this would have been perfectly acceptable. Sixty years on it leaves something to be desired.