Lady in the Fog

Who is Margaret? What happened to her? She just vanished. That's the mystery here, and for all accounts, of all who knew her, she is irrevocably lost and can't be found ever again. She vanished in some fire before the war (13 years ago) with several casualties in some work shop for exclusive technical instruments outside London somewhere, when beautiful Bernadette O'Farrell happens to meet Cesar Romero (as a journalist on a brief visit from America) at a bar where he is mixing an explosive cocktail, whch actually explodes like a bomb. That's just one of a number of comic curiosities in this film, which turn up every now and then. There is a film studio also with a great famous film producer with a sense of humour constantly laughing, but eventually he stops that when he needs a few more drinks (Geoffrey Keen, for once not a police inspector). The grand finale is in that film studio, somewhat reminding of other similar finales in great thrillers, like for instance "The Intimate Stranger" with Richard Baseheart and "Charade" with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, but this was ten years before that. The problem with Bernadette O'Farrell is that her brother has just been killed in a car accident (as someone drove him over in the fog), and she knows it was not an accident, while she has no evidence. Cesar Romero gets as interested in this as in her, and they start examing and digging up graveyards, figuratively speaking, and eventually locate a murder committed 13 years ago. There are some scenes in an asylum where an ingenious inventor is kept locked up, the asylum telling all who ask for him that he is dead, which Cesar Romero eventually finds out he isn't. There are some intriguing reminiscences here of James Hilton and his "Random Harvest", to some degree probably inspired by that ace of a story, and so the intrigues go rolling on. It's a great thriller on a small scale and quite exciting and captivating enough to keep your interest up all the way. Finally the mystery of Margaret is resolved, as she proves to be the lady in the fog.

"Lady in the Fog" is a 1952 film starring Cesar Romero as an amateur detective, Philip O'Dell, an American currently in London. He helps a woman (Lois Maxwell) whom he meets in a bar - her brother was run down by a car in the heavy London fog, but she is convinced that it wasn't accidental. O'Dell investigates, and finds himself involved with an old case, a mental hospital, a filmmaker, and a nightclub.

Romero is a delightful actor, and this story has a lot of comedic elements which he acquits very well. He was very underrated, which is clear if one sees him in "The Captain from Castile" and "Julia Misbehaves." The story of "Lady in the Fog" is about as lame as it gets and pretty easy to figure out. It's made on the cheap. Romero is always worth seeing, though.

In the thick fog of a London night a man is deliberately run over by a car driven by a woman: he was Denny McMara. The police classify it as an hit-and-run accident, but the young Heather, Danny's sister - basing on her own "intuition", but lacking of evidence -, is convinced it was a murder. An American magazine writer, Philip O'Dell, mainly motivated by the sex appeal of Heather, wants to help her prove her point, though Scotland Yard's inspector Rigby warns him not to mix, as an amateur private eye, with the sound investigation routine of the police.

But O'Dell, little by little, manages to uncover a ring of 4/5 people that would have had interest in killing Danny, their motive, and even the actual murderer. The problem is that every evidence he finds happen to be destroyed before he can show it to the Yard's inspector. At the end Rigby himself congratulates with O'Dell for solving the mystery: and we don't know why, because all the members of the gang are dead, by now, so the eventual evidence in the end is as feeble as it was in the beginning.

Quite cumbersome and totally predictable film, in whose plot nothing new happens; to make it worse, the comic traits are just laughable (ironically), not amusing.

O'Dell and Heather, at the end, of course, marry, which doesn't make the film any better, on the contrary...

Cesar Romero is an American PI trapped in London, waiting for the fog to lift so his plane can take off. He's passing the time in a bar with Lois Maxwell when a Peeler comes in to use the phone. A man has been struck and killed by a car. Miss Maxwell is convinced that it's her brother, so she and Romero go to look. It's as she feared. She is convinced he was murdered, but Romero's contacts in CID are retired, and there are lots of traffic accidents in Pea-soupers. So Romero and Miss Maxwell investigate.

It's a rather old-fashioned movie for 1952; hardly surprising, considering it's financed by Lippert and Hammer. Nonetheless, it's a nicely put together thriller, that leads to some unlikely places, with decent performances; director Sam Newfield, who spent too much of his career at PRC, demonstrates that given a decent script, he can turn out a good movie.

Cesar Romero ("O'Dell") is a visiting American sitting in a bar in London making a drink that wouldn't have looked out of place in Merlin's laboratory. He and the barman are trying to encourage the sceptical "Peggy" (Lois Maxwell) to partake when a police man enters the bar to use the phone to report an hit and run accident outside. She is expecting her brother - could he be the victim? Well it turns out he was, and now she and "O'Dell" determine to find out whether or not it was an accident and to get to the bottom of things. The mystery element of this is all a little procedural, but there is a bit of chemistry between Romero and Maxwell; there is quite a fun sub-plot between the American and his travel agent "Boswell" (Frank Birch) who is trying to repatriate him despite a pea-soup fog at the airport, and Geoffrey Keen finds himself with a more substantial part to deliver as the suspicious "Hampden". The aforementioned fog and the creepy Ivor Slaney score also contribute well to this by-the-numbers, but quite passable crime-noir.