It's 1805 and Yvonne de Carlo is in France spying for the British. Rock Hudson is the smuggler who took her there thinking she was working for Napoleon. Director Raoul Walsh does well by a ropey script and makes the Channel Islands look great, but it's still hard to take seriously.
Script adapt.: Borden Chase. (o.a. Victor Hugo)
Director: Raoul Walsh
Players: Maxwell Reed, Denis O'Day, Bryan Forbes, Arthur Wontner
John Gregson, Michael Craig, Richard Attenborough and some more fifties stars are trying to blow up a German fuel dump in this desert war tale. A good example of the genre - small-scale heroics, bit of class tension, the odd bit of self-sacrifice - but it's not terribly interesting any more. The obvious day-for-night shooting of many of the night scenes also undermines the realism of the desert locations.
Script: Robert Westerby
Director: Guy Green
Players: Dermot Walsh, Vincent Ball, Percy Herbert, Barry Foster, Andrew Foulds, George Murcell, Ray McAnally, Harold Goodwin, Tony Thawnton, Wolf Frees, George Mikell
John Gielgud has the licence to kill in this W.W.I spy saga, but he blunders big time. Hitchcock meets Maugham, and though the parts don't hang together to make a satisfying whole, at least the parts are good.
Script adapt.: Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, Jesse Lasky Jr., Alma Reville. (o.a. play Campbell Dixon, stories Somerset Maugham)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Players: Madeleine Carroll, Peter Lorre, Robert Young, Percy Marmont, Lilli Palmer, Florence Kahn, Michael Redgrave
James Mason and Valerie Hobson are mixed up in espionage in Turkey. Dennis Wheatley's original novel was called The Eunuch of Stamboul, but some words don't look good on cinema posters.
Script adapt.: Richard Wainwright, Howard Irving Young, Noel Langley. (o.a. Dennis Wheatley)
Director: Andrew Marton
Players: Peter Haddon, Frank Vosper, Kay Walsh, Cecil Ramage, Leonard Sachs
Four British officers are sent into occupied France to reconnoitre the German defences.
Okay-ish drama, more interesting for being filmed during the war rather than in the 50s during the war film boom, but not terribly memorable.
Script: Anatole de Grunwald, Captain Sir Basil Bartlett
Director: Harold French
Players: Hugh Williams, Michael Wilding, Roland Culver, James Mason, Carla Lehmann, Nancy Price, Percy Walsh, Anita Gombault, David Page, Betty Warren, Nicholas Stuart, Brefni O'Rourke, Karel Stepanek, Herbert Lom, John Salew, Beatrice Varley, F.R. Wendhausen, Yvonne André, Stewart Granger, Oscar Ebelsbacher
A local runs through the darkness and bursts into the village pub. He's seen it! Well, the village is near Loch Ness and there's no prize for guessing what he's seen.
A local professor decides to discover once and for all what sort of monster lurks in the depths of the loch, but he is mocked by the London scientific establishment. London reporters are equally cynical, but they know a good story when they see one. They descend on the village pub en masse and one is even bold enough to break into the home of the fierce professor. Unfortunately, the room he enters by is the bedroom of the professor's beautiful granddaughter. Ooops! He's given the bum's rush, but manages to spy on a dive where the diver vanishes. The professor is accused of manslaughter so the reporter volunteers to go down to the depths to find out what really happened. What will he find?
The Secret of the Loch is a standard big monster tale. It's unusual to see one from the thirties rather than the fifties but apart from that all the clichés of the genre are present and correct. The star is Seymour Hicks as the Professor Challenger-like figure. He grabs at every speech and gives them everything an old pro can. He's a bit less convincing towards the end when he's meant to go mad with a shotgun, but then the script gives only the thinnest reason for this behaviour.
The reporter and granddaughter are played by Frederick Peisley and a debuting Nancy O'Neill. Their affair is the worst bit of the film and sorely tries the patience of anyone waiting for a bit of monster action.
Another debutant is Rosamund John playing the local barmaid. She doesn't look her usual sleek self. Frankly she's hefty. Being a dedicated actress it's possible she did a Robert De Niro-style weight-gain to get into the part, but more likely she took one look at herself in this and stopped eating for a month. On the acting side, her inexperience doesn't show too much and if you had to pick which member of the cast would go on to stardom, then she's the one you'd go for.
But enough of all the acting stuff: what you want to know about is the monster. Is it any good? Does it cause terror? You'll not be surprised to learn that the special effects are achieved with a big lizard and some back projection. It's okay. Most of the underwater scenes look like they were filmed in a dry studio, but occasionally a stream of bubbles comes from the diver's helmet so either they had access to some sophisticated film processing or they actually went to the trouble of filming in a tank. It certainly doesn't look convincing.
If you were ten when The Secret of the Loch came out then this would have been the best film you'd ever seen. Particularly since it had a U certificate and the previous year's King Kong usually played with an H. For the rest of us, The Secret of the Loch is a pleasant timewaster if you're into rotten old movies. And if you aren't, what are you doing on this site?
Script: Charles Bennett, Billie Bristow
Director: Milton Rosmer
Players: Gibson Gowland, Eric Hales, Ben Field, Robert Wilton, Hubert Harben, Fewlass Llewellyn, Cyril McLaglen, Stafford Hilliard
Valentina Cortesa and Audrey Hepburn are sisters exiled in London in 1937. They get caught up in a bomb plot. The direction is by Thorold Dickinson and there is some interest along the way but the film never really gels.
Script: Thorold Dickinson, Wolfgang Wilhelm, Christianna Brand
Director: Thorold Dickinson
Players: Serge Reggiani, Charles Goldner, Megs Jenkins, Irene Worth, Michael Shepley, Athene Seyler, Geoffrey Hibbert, Sydney Tafler, Charlie Caroli and Paul, Michael Ripper, Bob Monkhouse, Sam Kydd
Teenage tearaways get involved with crime.
Interesting slice of 50s drama – not quite the Rebel Without a Cause it would like to be, but tolerable.
Script: Linette Perry
Director: Clive Donner
Players: Belinda Lee, Ronald Lewis, Michael Gwynn, David McCallum, Geoffrey Keen, Maureen Pryor, George Selway, Michael Brooke, George A Cooper, John Welsh, Hugh Manning, Anne Blake, Brendon Hanley, Philip Ray, Wendy Craig
Jack Hawkins and Glynis Johns try to settle in New Zealand in 1820, but find things are more difficult than they imagined.
This film never worked in the 50s and it's just embarrassing now.
Script adapt.: William Fairchild. (o.a. John Guthrie)
Director: Ken Annakin
Players: Inia Te Wiata, Laya Raki, Noel Purcell, Kenneth Williams, Patrick Warbrick, Thomas Heathcote, Tony Erstich, Francis de Wolff, Edward Baker, James Copeland, Norman Mitchell, Ian Fleming, Maharaia Winiata, Henry Gilbert, Patrick Rawiri, Mac Hata, J. Ward Holmes, Fred Johnson, F.B.J. Sharp, Kim Parker
Back in the days when they gave out Oscars for stories as well as scripts, Paul Dehn and James Bernard won one for this tale of a scientist (Barry Jones) who is so appalled by the bomb that he gives the authorities a week to stop all work on it or he'll detonate one in London. The Boulting Brothers are better known today for their comedies but this thriller shows they can produce tension as well as laughs.
Script: Roy Boulting, Frank Harvey. Scenario: Paul Dehn, James Bernard
Director: John Boulting
Players: Olive Sloane, Andre Morell, Sheila Manahan, Hugh Cross, Joan Hickson, Ronald Adam, Marie Ney, Geoffrey Keen, Russell Waters, Wyndham Goldie, Frederick Allen, Victor Maddern
Two escaped POWs try to cross occupied France and get helped by kindly James Robertson Justice. But is he as helpful as he seems?
Script adapt.: John Baines. (o.a. Rupert Croft-Cooke)
Director: Hugo Fregonese
Players: Stephen Boyd, Tony Wright, Kathleen Harrison, Eugene Deckers, Rosalie Crutchley, Anna Gaylor, Anton Diffring, Martin Miller, Leonard Sachs, Shirley Ann Field, Marne Maitland
Gifted pianist Ann Todd's psychoses prevent her from playing. Herbert Lom is the psychiatrist who tries to get to the root of her problems.
Melodrama was never madder - but it's irresistible.
Script: Sydney and Muriel Box
Director: Compton Bennett
Players: James Mason, Albert Lieven, Hugh McDermott, Yvonne Owen, David Horne, Manning Whiley, grace Allardyce, Ernest Davies, Beatrice Varley, John Slater, Margaret Withers, Arnold Goldsborough, Muir Matheson
George Curzon plays Sexton Blake, and the Hooded Terror is an international criminal organisation headed by none other than Tod Slaughter. Curzon played the part in three movies but the series never really took off. Since this is the best of them it's hardly surprising.
Script adapt.: A.R. Rawlinson. (o.a. Pierre Quiroule)
Director: George King
Players: Greta Gynt, Charles Oliver, Tony Sympson, Marie Wright, Norman Pierce, David Farrar, Max Faber, Carl Melene, Alex Huber, Philip Holles, Len Sharpe, H.B. Hallam
