Opiniones de usuarios

Short but effective suspense thriller shot on England's south-east coast. Although we know the bad guy from the start, the suspense is nevertheless maintained until the final shoot out on the rifle ranges which provide an unusual setting. Accents & dialogues typical of 50s England. Definitely worth viewing !

I noticed the weighted average user rating on IMDb.com for this film was only 5.6 and mainly voted for by males/females aged 45+.I thought it a cracking murder mystery and watching it tonight on YouTube.com and I voted 7/10.I had just started infants school when this was filmed in 1951 (I am now 65) but was attracted to it by seeing Edward Underdown in the cast list and seeing it was a wholly British film.The afore mentioned actor (1908-1989) played "Harry Chelm" in the cult John Huston 1953 film "Beat The Devil" playing the husband of my personal sex goddess film favourite, the late Jennifer Jones.

Like another reviewer I enjoyed seeing England as I remember it in my childhood.We too holidayed in Kent in the late 1940s/early 1950s.I particularly enjoyed seeing the almost complete absence of private cars and how one could park almost anywhere without seeing those wretched double yellow lines/no parking/"resident parking only" signs we see today.Maxwell Reed seems to be a favourite of the few reviewers above and I too have the DVD of him in "The Clouded Yellow" (1951) starring another of my raven haired favourite film actresses, the late Jean Simmons.

I was intrigued by the user comment that Edward Underdown (1908-1989) was much older than Natasha Parry who plays "the love interest" and indeed she is apparently still with us being born in 1930 and so was only 21 when this was filmed, while Edward was 43 during filming a sizable age difference.You rarely see detectives kissing the heroine on films of this age but Edward made a wry comment that "little detectives have to be born sometimes"!

A young actress happens to witness a ruthless criminal commit a second murder, putting her own life in danger. Filmed in England on the south-east coast it is very much a film of the time - everybody speaks with a stiff upper lip and everybody smokes, even when in the back of an ambulance! It's not exactly Hitchcock but does have some effective moments of suspense, plus it also makes good use of outdoor locations. Also notable for starring William Hartnell, who went on to become the first Dr Who.

A frequently incoherent but extremely well photographed drama in which tall dark Maxwell Reed, having demonstrated how ruthless a killer he is despatching his first two victims then makes a complete pig's ear of silencing Natasha Parry, who happened to be cycling past just after the second murder.

Many of the plot contrivances (including a very perfunctorily engineered romance between Miss Parry and the rather elderly looking detective played by Edward Underdown) and character vignettes by the likes of Barbara Murray and William Hartnell seem thrown in just as filler between cameraman Eric Cross's vivid noirish night scenes and enterprising use of the South Coast in bright sunshine to surprisingly sinister effect that anticipates 'And Soon the Darkness' nearly twenty years later.

Actress Natasha Parry is bicycling on the road when she hears a couple of shots, and sees a dark man emerge from the woods to stand by a standing auto. She thinks nothing of it, but in the dressing room that night, her fellow actress tells her the police are looking for witnesses. Miss Parry says she saw nothing useful, but her friend points out that it's always useful for an actress to get her name in the papers. Miss Parry reports the very little she knows to the police, and thinks that will be the end of it... until Superintendent of Police William Hartnell sees the item. With the unknown man having committed two murders, he thinks she's in for it, so he sends down Detective Inspector Edward Underdown to guard her, and possibly catch the dark man before he can kill her.

It's a handsomely shot movie, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, with an intelligently plausible arc of action that ends in a chase across the seashore in the darkling. It's photographed in long takes by Eric Cross; the lengthening shadows convert a taut policier into a shadowy noir at the end.

Poor old "Molly" (Natasha Parry) has the misfortune to witness the eponymous character commit double murder. He knows she knows, and she knows he knows that she does, and so now he (Maxwell Reed) is determined to shut her up before she can tell pursuing police inspector "Vine" (Edward Underdown) and he faces the gallows. There's no real jeopardy here - we all know who did what to whom, but it's still quite an engaging little cat and mouse thriller that, though it could certainly do with losing twenty minutes or so, has a strong supporting cast and some nice photography of England's Sussex coast as the adventure hots up to an exciting, if predictable, denouement. The acting and script are all pretty generic, but it's still worth a watch.

I wanted to see 'The Dark Man'for a while mainly because of Maxwell Reed; i seem lately to have watched him in a few of his 'Clouded Yellow'/'Night Beat'/'Dear Murderer'/'Square Ring'. I got a copy of Dark Man off ebay finally.It is a short 'B' film, however it is well done for its style, punchy and effective. Unfortunately, i think the shortened US version is the one doing the rounds, not the longer UK version.I'd be interested in seeing the original longer release. A very young Natasha Parry is the leading lady and does the job very nicely, though the age difference between her and Edward Underdown is a bit too great for easy belief. Maxwell Reed is the title's otherwise unnamed 'Dark Man' and he fits the role well both in his looks and behaviour. He brings an edgy presence to the film, the dark side of Underdown's whiter than white policeman. The 2 men have a passing physical resemblance as well. There is interesting location filming down on the coast and a very unusual finale on the shooting range. The way Maxwell Reed stalks Natasha Parry, building her fear, is effective and realistic; a simple beach scene has dark undertones. The director also writer Jeffrey Dell didn't helm many projects, a pity based on this effort.

You can punch a lot of holes in this one.

From 1951, The Dark Man, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, stars (and is) Maxwell Reed. He was Joan Collins' first husband, and ever since I heard what she said about him, I've never been able to stand him. Good thing he always plays creeps.

In this film, on a lonely road, he (Dark Man) kills a cab driver who could recognize him (his second murder that we know about). A young actress, Molly Lester (Natasha Perry) out on her bike hears the shot and sees him in the distance.

When a fellow thespian reads that the police are looking for witnesses, a reluctant Molly tells an officer (Edward Underdown) what she knows, and he informs her that her life is in danger. She will have to be guarded. There's a romantic interest, though he's 43 and she's 21.

Well, when you're being guarded, that means all the time, one would think. In Molly's case, I guess it's when they get around to it. At one point, Dark Man breaks into her apartment, removes the lightbulbs, and attacks her.

The guy has killed twice. Does he kill her? No. He turns on the gas. She lives.

Okay, then he picks her up in a cab. He wants to kill her because she may recognize him. Obviously she doesn't know who the heck he is or why he is heading out to a remote place.

It's well photographed, keeping Dark Man tall and in the dark. I wouldn't have recognized him either.

Maxwell Reed is the 'dark man' of the title who murders someone to steal his money and then decides his best course of action is to eliminate any potential witnesses who can point the finger at him. This includes a cab driver and actress Natasha Parry (Molly) who happens to be cycling by at the wrong time. Scotland Yard stick detective Edward Underdown (Jack) by her side for 24-hour police protection. Well, he's not very good at his job....

The film does have some tense sequences, most memorably Parry's visit to the isolated beach where she notices Reed's menacing presence sitting close by to her. Run, girl! There are, however, some daft plotlines. I mean, let's face it, Parry would have been killed on more than one occasion in reality. Unfortunately, the film's end sequence goes on for too long and contains too many characters from the army, police and wherever and it doesn't provide any real tension. We just get people running around and shooting at one another. Boring.

There is a very amusing line of dialogue when Underdown is briefed on his task to protect Parry and he is told that she might be good looking. Ha ha. Yep, that is the motivation for everyone. Off he goes on his new assignment with some hope. Is Parry a babe?

This was the first video i bought to go with my new video player about a decade ago. Having spent a part of my childhood in the area where it was filmed it was fun to spot the locations, the heroine getting on the bus to go to the beach at what looks like Hastings only to get off near the Romney marshes, which is some way to go for a quick bit of sunbathing. The story of the criminal classes up to no good and an innocent bystander in danger has been told many times before,and since. Maxwell Reed as the moody Dark Man is worth the price of the video alone, William Hartnell ( future Dr who)always watchable. But the main reason is seeing the final scenes at the "pre-nuclear" Dungeness coastline. The only negative is with the UK video release which has part of the story missing, I assume this is a copy of the US release which was shorter.

A terrific British B movie of the period! One of the filming locations listed is Camber Sands, but the denouement takes place at Dungeness where the Lighthouse and the Railway Station of the Hythe/Romney and Dymchurch Narrow Gauge Railway feature strongly - the line swings around the Dungeness terminus and can be seen quite clearly.

It is a rather simple story, a rather usual commonplace thriller with a murderer desperately trying to get away and to kill his only witness, getting the more hopelessly lost the harder he tries. He is no character, just a desperate cold-blooded murderer, and the others are not much of characters either. What makes the film interesting is the impressive cinematography with many scenes that would suggest some Hitchcock influence, and the finale, with the army called out to chase the murderer, is a typical Hitchcock kind of scenery. Edward Underdown as the leading police officer on the hunt is a bit too good-looking for a policeman, but the story is spiced to some interest when he falls in love with the girl in danger whom he is supposed to watch and keep out of danger, which he nevertheless fails in several times. The theatre scenes and the two scenes where she is taking it easy having tea at a bar, and the scene on the beach, where on both locations she is being watched by the murderer waiting for her in lurking menace, are quite intriguing. The film is well made on a well written story, although the story is quite ordinary for a thriller. The music is also very apt.