Mr. Reeder in Room 13

Having been reminded via Talking Picture TV of the excellent "The Mind of Mr JG Reeder", they dug this one up for us to compare!

The actor who played Mr Reeder has little screen time so it looks like they used the name to sell the film.

Wooden acting! "... er ..." while the actor recalls his lines is understandable in early live TV, but never in film. Most of the participants are of this low standard.

Interesting only to see how bad British cinema used to be in the Thirties

Mystery of Room 13 or Mr. Reeder in Room 13 is a 1938 British film starring Gibb McLaughlin, Peter Murray-Hill and Sally Gray. A young man (Murray-Hill) wants to work for "Special Services" and is given an assignment of going undercover in prison to discover who is printing counterfeit bank notes.

After that it gets weird. His girlfriend marries someone else, a crony of her father's. The main character, once he's released from prison, finds unexpected connections to the counterfeit ring and comes up against Gray's husband.

The marriage plot was ridiculous. Fuzzy sound, slow, not much to recommend it except I have always liked Sally Gray.

Although emaciated veteran character actor Gibb McLaughlin is billed above the title in the title role as the late Edgar Wallace's "famous criminal investigator" J.G.Reeder in this slick, cynical little potboiler with germanic sets and lighting (and a very busy music score), he actually takes a back seat for much of the film as various other characters busy about engaged in a variety of illegal and mean-spirited activities before it all goes wildly over the top for the climax (again reminiscent of an old 'Dr Mabuse' adventure) while Reeder himself keeps watch in his own words "at a safe distance".

Edgar Wallace's J. G. Reeder makes his screen debut in this sluggish low key British B feature.

The government calls for civil servant Mr Reeder to do something about forged banknotes flooding the country.

Reeder calls in Captain Johnnie Gray who wants to serve his country and does so by going to Dartmoor prison in order to infiltrate the crooks who are doing the forging.

In doing so Gray breaks up with his Claire Kane. In jail he notices that an- bitter elderly robber Emmanuel Legge has been released from prison and is picked up by his son Jeff.

When Gray is also released from jail, he finds out that Claire is getting married to a Major Floyd. He turns out to be Jeff and it has all been planned by Legge to get revenge on Claire's father who was once also a crook.

Gray needs to rescue Claire from Jeff who is also a bigamist after marring her.

There is a lot of plot but also many contrivances and coincidences. This is a listless film and Reeder is a minor character in his own movie.

Given that this film is based on a novel by Edgar Wallace it should be no surprise that this is full of twists and turns.Alas though it seems to rely too much on plot contrivances and coincidences.The most ridiculous being that Peter Murray Hill should go to prison for two and a half years to find out about a counterfeit gang.Surely even by 1938 this device must have had whiskers on it.At times the plot of the film is rather difficult to follow,so that after about an hour you rather give up on it.I would therefore have to say that this film is only for die-hard thriller fans or those who would wish to see every film made of Edgar Wallace's output.