As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An airport security officer, Tim Matthews (Jack Watling), meets a former army mate, Harry Preston (Terence Alexander), who is employed by a master criminal called Pliny (Karel Stepanek). Under his orders, Harry gets Tim into debt through gambling and then takes him to see Luigi (John Le Mesurier), Pliny's second in command, who, of course, has the ideal solution to his problems. For £500.00, Tim will have more than enough to clear his debts but, naturally, there is a catch - Luigi demands that Tim hands over the schedule for a bullion plane's arrival into Heathrow Airport. When Tim refuses, the gang abduct him and threaten him with his wife Jane (Susan Stephen). He then agrees to co-operate and the gang force him to act as an inside man by getting him to drug his colleagues' tea and to gain them access to the vault where £250,000 worth of gold bullion is being stored. But things turn out not to be as plain sailing as Pliny's thugs would have hoped.A British b-pic heist thriller from ACT Productions, a company founded by the film technicians union with the aim of countering unemployment in the industry and it specialised in low budget programmers such as this. It went out on the Gaumont-British circuit supporting the Rita Hayworth picture, Miss Sadie Thompson in 1954. Trivia buffs will like to know that the storyline was provided by none other than Percy Hoskins who was chief crime reporter for the Daily Express newspaper.Dangerous Cargo is better than one would have expected for a second feature with director John Harlow generating some tension and suspense but, alas, he is defeated by the obligatory happy ending that was always the way for these productions and one can see it coming from some distance off. A darker, more dramatic ending would have lifted this well above the average. Nevertheless, there are good performances from a cast that includes many familiar faces including John Le Mesurier (Dad's Army) and Terence Alexander (Bergerac) and the film has a good sense of place thanks to its authentic locations that are put to good use and good black and white lensing.

DANGEROUS CARGO – 1954DANGEROUS CARGO is a lightweight crime thriller from the UK. There is really nothing new fans of the genre have not seen before. The easy to figure out plot has Jack Watling getting involved with some unsavoury types over a gambling debt.Watling works at an airport warehouse that handles cargoes of gold bullion. A gang ran by Karel Stepanek have been watching the place. All they need is an in, and as it so happens, they have one. One of the gang members, Terrance Alexander is an old army buddy of Watling.Alexander takes Watling and his wife, Susan Stephen out for a night of dining and a trip to the dog track. Watling wins some cash and thinks this is the life. What he does not know is that it is all a set up. The next few times Watling hits the track he loses his shirt. He is soon in debt to a bookmaker.Needless to say the bookie is willing to overlook the debt for a bit of info on gold cargo deliveries. Watling is less than happy with this idea and tells the gang to get stuffed. He soon changes his mind after a sound beating and being told that the gang has kidnapped his young son.Watling of course now agrees to go along with the deal. What he does is let his company in on what is happening. The Yard is quickly called in and a sting operation set up. When the gang try their hold-up the boys in blue are all waiting. There is a huge free for all with fists and clubs between the gang and the Police. Gang boss, Stepanek pulls a revolver but is disarmed by Watling after taking a round. The boy is rescued, Watling survives his wound and the film ends with him and wife Stephen kissing.While not the worst crime film out there, the best thing that can be said about this film, is that it only runs for 61 minutes.

This is a film produced by the technicians union ACT.Presumably this was to provide employment for its studio technicians.However this is the sort of film that helped close cinemas by the hundreds at this time thus putting their cinema staff out of work.Much of this film was clichéd when it was made.Thus the anonymous boss who speaks to his gang by radio is a device first used in the 2 film versions of Edgar Wallaces "The Frog" which date back to the 1930s.The end of the film is slightly farcical.With the cops and robbers laying into one another ,the boss suddenly produces a weapon,and everyone,including his gang members stand still!Obviously none of the police thought that the gang would be armed.As mentioned in the other review John Le Mesurier does seem to have trouble in his role of "Luigi" in consistently maintaining an accent throughout.So what is supposed to be a dramatic moment loses its impact when Le Mes opens his mouth.Not one of his better efforts.

The plot of DANGEROUS CARGO has most of the basic ingredients of a standard mid-fifties British B film. Tom Matthews is a trusted precious-cargo handler at a main airport. He has a chance meeting with an old wartime colleague Harry who takes Tom and his wife Janie to the dog track and they gratefully win some money. However Harry is chauffeur to a gang leader who intends to mount a raid on the airport secure vault but they need inside information about when precious cargos arrive. So Harry takes Tom to the dog track again and encourages him to bet but Tom ends up heavily in debt to a bookmaker, money that he cannot pay. This leaves him open to blackmail by Luigi, one the gang leaders, who forces Tom to reveal when the next precious cargo is due.The film offers a fairly rare leading role for easy-going actor Jack Watling but his acting abilities are barely tested with this one. Susan Stephen who looks and sounds uncannily like Haley Mills plays Janie his wife. The villains try to be classic 1950s B film stereotypes complete with foreign accents (genuine in the case of Karel Stepanek who plays the gang leader Pliny and phoney in the case of second-in-command Luigi played by John Le Mesurier). In fact the latter's 'foreign' accent cannot be sustained and he frequently lapses into 'home counties'. Pliny preserves his anonymity from the other motley gang members by addressing them from an adjoining room with the aid of a microphone, speaker and two-way mirror. It's hilarious stuff and a novel system similar to that used by villain 'The Voice' in the early 1960s British TV serial 'Gary Halliday '. It's a bit of a shock though to see popular actor Terence Alexander playing the two-timing Harry but he is smooth and convincing.As a British B film aficionado I found it mildly entertaining but not a lot.