Echo of Diana

Dermott Walsh has disappeared. His wife, Betty McDowall, believes his private plane has gone down, and him with it. Then the radio announces that authorities believe they have found the crashed plane near the Turkish border, and her friend, Clare Owen, points out a notice in the personal ads of a paper: "In Memoriam, Philip Scott (Walsh), killed in an air crash June 4; Fondest love. No regrets. Diana."

Miss McDowall is called into Scotland Yard, where Geoffrey Toone tells her there are spy matters going on. At that point, things become confused.

It's a nice little mystery wrapped in a spy thriller, with mysterious spy rings and no one to trust. It's a cheap little thriller, but the actors speak their lines as if they mean them and there's no clear answer to whodunnit until the big reveal at the end. Not bad at all.

This is quite an enthralling little low budget British thriller as "Joan" (Betty McDowell) starts to investigate the suspicious death of her husband in a plane crash on the Turkish border. Was he a spy? We set out to discover with the help of journalists "Pam" (Clare Owen) and "Bill" (Vincent Ball) what exactly happened - is he actually dead? Ernest Morris was an old hand at keeping these moving along a-pace and does so adequately here, too, with plenty of double-crosses to keep it interesting. The jungle-drums music is of the time, and no less annoying for that - it is no substitute for taut writing.

A cheap British spy effort from those hard-working fellows at Butcher's Film Service, ECHO OF DIANA offers something a little different for fans of the genre. For a start, it's not a film with a clear-cut plot; most of this one takes the form of a mystery that slowly unravels over the hour-long running time. It's an intriguing little thing in places, following a wife's determination to solve the mysteries surrounding her husband's death in a plane crash in Turkey.

A friend and reporter help her to uncover the truth about what happened, and the authorities also take a keen interest. However, there's also a murderous kidnap gang at work, and each of these factions works against the other as the running time unfolds. Part detection, part kidnap thriller, part hostage drama; ECHO OF DIANA is always sedate and a little genteel, but it kept me watching from beginning to end, which is more than can be said for some.

Australian actress Betty McDowall is the erstwhile lead and pretty good with it too; her character grows on you and she evokes sympathy as the storyline progresses. The casting director had an eye for talent with lots of good little roles for the likes of Geoffrey Toone, a funny Michael Balfour, a quirky Marianne Stone, and even a pivotal cameo from Dermot Walsh. Director Ernest Morris made this back-to-back with SHADOW OF FEAR and it's by far the superior of the two films.

Kind of surprised at the 5.5 rating. It's definitely not. It's a simple story but with some interesting twists and turns. The acting is very good and at no time did I disbelieve what was going on. At the time of writing (2023) the lead actor is still alive, about to turn 100 this December. The others have all long since passed. As a Canadian I get to see many British movies here in Austria by watching a British channel on my TV courtesy of my giant satellite dish capable of capturing faint signals from abroad. This film was above the average of the ones I've seen over the years and enjoyed the way it ended.

Given the demand for spy films generated by the success of the James Bond films Butchers decided to have a go.However they did it with a tiny budget and a plot that would be enough for a film 2 hours long.I watched this twice and i have to confess that i still did not understand the twists and turns in the second half of the film,with a shoal of red herrings swimming around.There just seemed to me to be a large number of incidents that were unexplained.The film was competently acted and directed and the whole thing rattled along at a fair pace.However once you have partly lost the thread in this sort of film you are completely lost