Model for Murder

Julia Arnell, a high-priced model, is murdered when she accidentally interrupts a diamond heist while returning her dress to the fashion shop. The remainder of the movie is seeing if the bad guys are going to get caught and how Keith Andes, who has been falsely accused, will clear himself. Michael Gough and Edwin Richfield have great chemistry as the bad guys. Hazel Court and Jean Aubrey are cute as sisters helping Andes clear himself. The movie itself while having an interesting plot lacks suspense or tension. The musical score is horrible. Okay as a time waster.

An American comes to London to look for the girl friend of his dead brother.He finds her modeling in a haute culture salon.Unfortunately for her she interrupts thieves looting the safe of diamonds on behalf of the crooked boss of the salon.The American is knocked out trying to confront the thieves and to nobody's great surprise he is suspected by the police of having committed the murder.As is usual in these type of films he is at the forefront of bringing the gang to justice.Despite the best efforts of both Michael Gough and Hazel Court this film never raises the level of excitement above mediocre at best.Too much of this film seems to have been borrowed from similar films of the same era.

Unfortunately 1959 was a simply terrible year for fashion. Hazel Court and the actress playing her sister Nancy are forced to beetle around in frumpy "sack back" dresses and bucket hats, while the star model gown is a vulgar creation in gold lame. The girl playing the brother's ex-fiancee is good, with her rank starlet voice and industrialist boyfriend.

The villains, Gough, Burke and Richfield give their usual sterling performances.

I think those dresses really were called "sacks".

Merchant mariner Keith Andes is in London to speak with the ex-fiancee of his dead brother. When she turns up dead in the middle of a jewel robbery by fashion house head Michael Gough, he is clunked on the head and framed. It's up to him to try and prove his innocence with the help of Hazel Court.

It's a fun little B mystery, directed by Terry Bishop, with lots of pretty girls and several brief, eccentric characters. Gough is suave as the bad guy whose well laid plans for the robbery go awry; George Benson is fun as the boring and slightly boorish industrialist dating the model; and Charles Lamb has a nice little bit as a lock keeper, making sure he pockets a tip while saying he shouldn't have. Andes is a trifle suave and perfunctory as the innocent man accused as murder, but at 70 minutes, it's great to watch the tightly written how-catch-him movie wind its way through the plot

An old-fashioned thriller with American Keith Andes as an American ship's officer mixed up with fashion models and scoundrels like Michael Gough and Edwin Richfield. Entertaining if implausible. And when does the First Mate of a merchant ship (oil tanker?) leave the ship on arrival in port? Never in my experience, they have work to do.