Mark of the Phoenix

Anton Diffring stars in this duff British supporting thriller concerning (guess what!) the smuggling of a cigarette case composed of a secret alloy. Really it's just "The Lavender Hill Mob" without the Eiffel towers or the comedic charm of Ealing. Its produced by "Butcher's Films", Britain's poverty row film production company who turned out many a mediocre b-feature at this time. This particular one was made in 1957, but shelved until 1959 until a suitable main feature was found to go with it. Don't let the rather nudging title fool you because it's not that exciting. These days the Butcher's films occasionally turn up on ITV in the wee small hours as a time filler.

The film has an interesting and complex plot dotted with humour, as perhaps expected from the combination of its writer's experiences, as a post WWII commando in the Royal Marines, an Oxford University graduate in English literature, a technical translator and an associate professor. Desmond Cory's prolific writing career produced 45 spy thrillers as well as several screenplays, radio scripts, children's books and academic papers.

In Mark of the Phoenix we have real locations, which give the plot more authenticity than the usual budget thriller. I'm not sure why IMDb has the film's location as Walton-on-Thames? Check out ReelStreets for the actual settings. Locating the action in Bruxelles is also a coup de maître, in that the Belgian education system encourages fluency in English to avoid the obvious language conflicts. Furthermore, Bruxelles is both a multicultural city and a travel hub for the rest of Europe and Asia. In the fifties however, planes and helicopters were perhaps considered more stylish than the noir-esque night train from Bruxelles to Berlin.

The Mark of the Phoenix plot works because everything has been pre-planned and by one character for a single outcome and just as a hint, it is not the delivery of a cigarette case. It's all in the title.

MARK OF THE PHOENIX is a stodgy little effort from the reliably poor Butcher's Film Service. This one tries for a Cold War vibe but ends up being poorly-plotted and rather uninteresting, with long stretches where nothing happens. The cast of rogues are hardly engaging and the storyline, about a new metal alloy which everybody's trying to get their hands on, is particularly dull.

The film features Anton Diffring and Roger Delgado as a couple of detectives on the hunt for a cigarette case, and there are various murders and fights between principal characters along the way. However, the direction is constantly pedestrian - Maclean Rogers did a lot better with some of the Paul Temple films earlier in his career - and the script from CARRY ON writer Norman Hudis fails to find any sympathetic characters in the cast. It's nice to see Diffring and Delgado playing the good guys for a change, but they have very little screen time at the end of the day.

All manner of interesting detail, if you study it well

Classic cars, like the Ford Zodiac, with whitewall tyres, and the Citroen Traction Avant

The planes and airline scenes are well worth studying too

The plot might be thin by today's standards, but the Brussells street views more than make up for it

I found it thoroughly entertaining, and worth watching

This has a surprisingly decent cast for a cheap and cheerful cold war espionage thriller. A special metal that could change the whole future of warfare is crafted into a cigarette case that accidentally falls into the hands of American jewel thief "Martin" (Sheldon Lawrence). Needless to say, those sinister folks want it back and what ensues over the next hour is a rather feebly constructed drama that rather joins the dots before an ending that offers little by way of suspense or jeopardy. It's quite dialogue heavy too, with little chemistry between Lawrence and the unremarkable Julia Arnell ("Petra") and though it passes the time effortlessly enough, it's all quite forgettable.