Dick Barton Strikes Back

Very Early Hammer Cheapie when the Newly-Born Studio was Floundering About in a Number of Genres.

In this one Hammer Dumbs-Down Popular Radio Hero Barton to a Comedy-Adventure with Copious Amounts of Slapstick and Bad Mugging.

Certainly Made for a Juvenile Audience.

It's Lively, if Nothing Else, and Manages a Fast-Pace both in Montage and Dialog.

This Type of Speedy Line-Delivery is Reminiscent of Screw-Ball Comedies from Hollywood.

They also Borrow the Style and Tone of the Serials.

Most of the Action is Fisticuffs with a Couple of Car Romps and Bit on the Sea.

The Studio Saw the Error of Their Ways and the Sequels are Much Better.

Not Much to Offer Except Nostalgia for those that Lived Through the Early Years of the Brit. Hero.

Most of those Fans will be Disappointed with this Entry but can Look Forward to Better Movies Ahead.

Based upon the long running Dick Barton series from radio DICK BARTON STRIKES BACK is not without interest if only to give a view of British immediate post war austerity and mentality . Britain was quite rightly proud of the fact that from the Summer of 1940 through to most of 1941 she stood alone against German Nazism and Italian fascism . Her reward for winning the war was losing the subsequent peace . It was also obvious in the aftermath of the war that the standard of living in Britain had actually fallen compared to the times when the U-Boats patrolled the Atlantic and the Luftwaffe had bombed British cities

This is reflected in DBSB right from the opening scene where Dick and Snowey go in to a nightclub and foreign cultural influences abound . Snowey can't get a pint of bitter and if that isn't bad enough the waiting staff who are all foreign are in league with another bunch of foreigners led by a villain with the name of Fouracada . You can't help noticing that these criminals aren't of traditional Anglo Saxon stock and while you can accuse the film of a xenophobic mindset this would merely reflect the average British experience of other cultures . Europeans would be fascists , Zionists would be terrorists , Arabs would be rabid nationalists with new found power via oil and even an erstwhile ally such as America would be a cynical fair weather friend . Perhaps most sadly of all the Soviet Union would be on a par with Hitler's Germany #

For a film that uses a radio series as its source this is a B movie that deserves some credit for trying to be cinematic in feel .What I did notice is that its outlandish plot featuring a death ray controlled by a bunch of nasty foreigners does have a lot in common in the James Bond franchise but their are important differences . There's no exotic locations and a climax set around Blackpool pleasure beach isn't something you'd get in a Fleming story . Don Stannard as Barton might be square jawed but he's not a dirty fighter and when he gets in to a punch up with one of the bad guys it's unexpected he doesn't throw him out of the lift door . I'm guessing in those days it was only Johnny Foreigner who would do something unsporting like that ?

Dick Barton Strikes Back was the second of Hammer's Dick Barton films to be released, but was actually the last to be filmed. It's easily the best of the three films, director Godfrey Grayson getting the formula just right, eschewing the comedy of the first film and largely avoiding the silly contrivances that ruined both Dick Barton Special Agent and Dick Barton at Bay. This one ups the seriousness and level of action and is all the better for it.

The result feels very much like a proto-James Bond adventure, with it's suave British hero (once again played by Don Stannard), a very Fleming-style villain in Fouracada (Sebastian Cabot), and a diabolical plot that sees the bad guys using a powerful sonic weapon of mass destruction to help their un-specified country to achieve world domination. There's even a femme fatale who turns ally in the form of Tina (Jean Lodge), and several scenes in which the antagonists have an opportunity to kill Barton once and for all, but instead opt to put him in a perilous situation from which he has a chance to escape. It makes one wonder whether Ian Fleming was inspired in some part by Barton when creating Bond.

After plenty of deft detective work, the main clue being a piece of jaunty gypsy music heard at the location of each of Fourocada's test sites, Barton tracks down the sonic device to the top of the Blackpool Tower. The final act is an exciting race against time as Barton fights his way to the top of the tower, past various henchmen, to confront the mastermind of the whole dastardly scheme.

Far better than the other Barton films, Dick Barton Strikes Back would have been followed by more adventures for the special agent, if only star Stannard hadn't been killed in a car crash shortly after filming - a real shame, because this one saw the series going in the right direction, and further films could have catapulted Stannard to super-stardom.

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Easily the best film in the Dick Barton trilogy, showing a cinematic professionalism the first two lacked. This was the last to be filmed but released second, sad to lose Don Stannard so young and promising in 1949. Apart from the Boys Own adventure storyline, and Barton speaking in capital letters, this was a good attempt at cheapo-noir, nice camera work and high production values being a constant source of surprise.

Gang of evil musical gypsies (can I put that nowadays?) led by ruthlessly evil Englishman (that always OK nowadays) have developed an evil sonic beam that will eventually be used to wipe Britain out and put it out of its misery. They experiment first by destroying thousands of people in two quaint English towns, the beam "instantaneously shrivelling their brains" - the carnage and the bodies seemed to have been cleared away by the authorities in less than a day. Sebastian Cabot as Fouracada the evil second in command who was marvellously over the top, is warned by Barton that "The Indemnity For Murder Is Not A Slight One" to no avail - I wish the film would have run another 3 hours just for their melodramatic battle of wills. The location shots of the stricken emptied town and later Blackpool and its Tower were very good and used efficiently. All I could remember of the film after last seeing it on TV in 1981 were the scenes in and up the Tower, I think that idea was a winner! During the climax the boss appeared to be using his suitcase in much the same way as a laptop would be - but he couldn't be - could he?

There are the usual silent stretches with background music for company as a reminder this was a cheaply made film, but Hammer did brilliantly well in disguising it.

In preparation for the latest edition of the "House of Hammer" podcast, I watched the 1949 film "Dick Barton Strikes Back", a proto James Bond crossed with Sherlock Holmes character, for whom Hammer made a series of films.

Dick Barton (Don Stanard) and his associate Snowy White (Bruce Walker) are turned on to new threat by a US agent, who subsequently turns up dead. Fouracada (Sebastian Cabot) has come to the UK to test a new weapon, and is not prepared for Barton to threaten it's progress. When the inhabitants of a northern town are all killed, simultaneously, in mysterious circumstances, it's up to Barton to track down Fouracada and save the nation again.

I actually quite liked this. Even with the stiff upper lip of it all, the performances were mostly solid and the film looks a lot better than the Hammer films from just a few years earlier. At just 68 minutes the story whizzes along, putting Barton in danger Saturday morning serial style before showing an unlikely escape. There's a "Hooded claw" style silent overlord for the villains, the reveal of whom is pretty obvious, but doesn't undermine the film, even when he reveals the entire plan at his time of triumph. The best bit though is the consistent use of "The Devil's Gallop" which was his theme tune at the time but has, unfortunately for the sincerity of the film, been entirely corrupted for me by Mitchell and Webb's "Digby Chicken Caesar" sketch.

There's a bit of post-war xenophobia with the villains coming from an unnamed foreign country but looking an awful lot like Romany gypsy stereotypes. The noise of the sonic weapon, which we hear for lengthy sections of the film is extremely annoying. The character of Snowy really doesn't add much, other than reflecting how great Barton is and his obsession with getting a pint of Bitter.

But when the Blackpool Tower finale reached it's conclusion (and I put my headphones back on) I was reasonably satisfied with what I'd seen.