Sick Product of a Sick System

The first must-see film of the year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Yes I really fancied Yvonne Romain since I adore curvy dark brunette film stars.I kept hoping she would appear in every other shot as I had never seen this film before.Courtesy of "Talking Pictures" on channel 81, I saw this film tonight and was impressed by how much the producer did with his limited budget.Of interest was seeing loctional shots of Newhaven and other west Sussex resorts.Peter Vaughan for once discards his usual sinister role & plays the lead as an insurance investigator tracking down a fake life assurance fraud.I enjoyed seeing Derek Guyler again as an all purpose railway employee from his popular t.v.role of playing the school caretaker in t.v.'s 1960s "Please Sir".It was humourous seeing Peter Vaughan ordering multiple champagne cocktails from Sam Kydd (who this time played a bar steward), as his character was on a limited expense budget - the same as the film producer!

Came across this little known British Thriller when searching the net for similar movies. This is one of a number made by Renown pictures and there are many available to buy from them or Amazon.This is the first one I watched and I liked it very much. The story revolves around a supposed life assurance fraud, possible suicide and maybe murder.Like a lot of similar films of the time it is very short at 66 minutes but that was the least of my worries.There are some great parts played by well known character actors like Patrick flood, Deryck Guyler and Glynn Edwards, however the show is stolen by the marvellous Peter Vaughan as the tight fisted assessor, although as we see later in the film he has good reason for his meanness. I googled him afterwards and see he is still working at nearly 90!An enjoyable hour or so and I look forward to watching more in the series.

A car engulfed in flames plummets to the bottom of a cliff on the Sussex coast. The car belonged to a wealthy businessman called John Dexter but the police can find no trace of a body. The Australian Life insurance company suspect a fraud since only recently, Dexter and his business partner, Graham Turner (Gerald Flood), took out life insurance policies worth £100.000 each. London insurance investigator Ropey Roper (Peter Vaughan) arrives to investigate and with the help of Australian Life insurance man Trevor Bayliss (John Carson) he learns that Dexter had withdrawn a large sum of money from his bank just prior to the crash. In addition, the porter at a nearby railway station recalls seeing a man matching Dexter's description boarding a train on the night of the crash. Meanwhile, Dexter's widow, Janet (Yvonne Romain), has put in a claim for her husband's insurance money. It looks like a straight forward case of insurance fraud - husband fakes death so that wife can collect - but Roper soon suspects something more sinister than that. He learns that Bayliss was once in love with Janet and that it was he who pressured the two men into taking out the policies. He also discovers that Turner was keen to sale the business since he was heavily in debt but Dexter it seems was not. Is the insurance fraud a smokescreen for a cleverly planned murder? A well above average quota quickie whodunit from Butcher's who specialised in low budget programme fillers like this. While the supporting cast only offer serviceable performances, Vaughan offers a charming portrayal of the dogged Roper. On the face of it he is extremely tight fisted with money and isn't above fiddling his expenses either i.e. claiming a three bob plus tip taxi fare even though he made the trip on foot. There is an amusing little scene where he invites the missing man's young secretary over to his hotel for a drink to plug her for information about her bosses. The waiter (Sam Kydd) is amazed since he had been trying in vain to persuade Roper to buy something ever since he arrived when he allows her to be "terribly extravagant" and order a champagne cocktail. Rather reluctantly, Roper has to keep them coming until she tells him enough so that the final pieces of the puzzle fit into place. And when she does he excitedly rushes off leaving the poor girl who is by now rather tipsy to pay the four pounds fifteen and sixpence bill though not because of his mean ways. There is a touching moment in writer-director Jim O' Connolly's script where we finally learn the reasons for Roper's apparently miserly ways. His wife is dying from a terminal illness and he is respecting her wishes to spend her last days at home even though it is putting a huge financial strain on him and regardless of her doctor's advice. "It's not often you meet such a generous nature" the doctor says to the nurse who feels guilty about taking her wages off Roper every week.The film is enlivened with a real sense of place and period thanks to the excellent use of location shooting in Brighton and around the Sussex coast, which is beautifully shot in documentary style black and white by Jack Mills. One can see that a little more care and attention had been paid to this film. We even get a flashback sequence to the night of the crime as Roper explains to the police and the interested parties how he arrived at his conclusions as to the truth of the matter.All in all, Smokescreen can be enjoyed as a pleasant reminder of an era of film-making gone by. There was once a time when little gems like this used to appear on ITV in the wee small hours as time fillers or as "a cure for insomnia" as one of their harshest critics put it. But interest in this particular area of the British film industry seems to be increasing as more and more are finding their way on to DVD for a new generation of fans to enjoy.

Peter Vaughan, a wonderful actor, is the rather slimy insurance investigator investigating a claim in coastal Sussex.And this unlikely hero succeeds where the Police have failed!Made on a tiny budget, this film proves that enormous budgets are not always necessary to make good cinema.Truly a minimalist marvel.