Cover Girl Killer

The British made suspense film, "Cover Girl Killer" (1959) follows the exploits of a mentally disturbed but un-named man (played with 100% sinister conviction by the wonderful Harry H Corbett) who is so strongly opposed to the use of sexually suggestive images on magazine covers, he takes it upon himself to murder any model he can find who is happy to exploit herself on a top shelf mag by posing as a photographer.

Young hopefuls are lured back to his seedy flat for portfolio photographs, never to leave the room alive.

To assist the police, the "WOW" magazine editor (Spencer Teakle) sets a plant by putting his girlfriend (gorgeous Felicity Young) on the next month's front cover in order to trap the serial killer.

Things go tits up however, and that's when the fun begins...

Well worth seeing for the very creepy performance of Harry H Corbett who started out as a serious Shakespearian stage actor and ultimately became immortalised in the long running British comedy series, "Steptoe and Son" (which was reworked in the States as "Sanford and Son") and the "Carry On" movie comedies.

Serial killer thrillers have become quite popular in Hollywood over recent years, especially since the success of "The Silence of the Lambs", but "Cover Girl Killer" is a rare British example of the genre from the late fifties. A maniac is targeting the models who have posed for the front cover of a men's magazine called "Wow!" The magazine's publisher and his girlfriend (herself a model) join forces with the police to help track down the killer.

A film made on this theme twenty, or maybe even ten, years later, to say nothing of one on the subject today, would doubtless be ultra-violent with plenty of nudity, and possibly sex scenes as well. In 1959, however, they did things differently. Although it deals with murder, the film is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional in the same way as an Agatha Christie mystery is reassuringly old-fashioned and traditional. The investigating detective is played as the typical Englishman from so many films around this period, tweedy, pipe-smoking and normally seen brewing himself a cup of tea. "Wow!" magazine is much tamer than the "Playboy" type of girlie mag, with no nudity or even toplessness; pictures of girls in bikinis is about as far as it gets. The girls themselves are all pretty, sweet and wholesome rather than raunchy or seductive. Even the publisher is not some Hugh Hefner or Bob Guccione figure but a mild-mannered Canadian archaeologist who has inherited the magazine from an eccentric uncle.

Even the killer is a traditional figure, a deranged Jack the Ripper type who is on a mission to cleanse Britain of what he sees as a tide of filth and obscenity. (We never learn his true name, although he uses various false ones; in the cast list he is referred to simply as "The Man"). When we first see him he is wearing thick pebble glasses, a badly-fitting wig and a raincoat, making him look like the standard cartoon image of the Dirty Old Man. (Ironically, "You dirty old man!" was to become the catch-phrase of the actor who plays him, Harry H Corbett, when he later starred in the television comedy series "Steptoe and Son"). This image proves to be a disguise; the killer is rather more subtle and intelligent than the police had originally assumed. Just because he's a psychopath doesn't mean he's stupid.

Corbett's portrayal of this obsessive maniac makes for the best contribution to the film. He started off as a serious actor, even starring in productions of Shakespeare, but was unlucky in two ways. He was unlucky in that he shared a name with Harry Corbett, the popular children's entertainer of "Sooty Bear" fame. Although he did not have a middle name, he was forced to add a bogus middle initial in an attempt to avoid confusion, not always successfully. (According to one, possibly apocryphal, story, this confusion was responsible for the Sooty Bear man being made an Officer of the British Empire, an honour which should have gone to his namesake). He was also unlucky in that the success of "Steptoe" led to his being typecast as a comic actor and made it impossible for him to re-establish himself in the sort of serious drama he preferred. In the later part of his career he was rarely offered parts in anything but comedies.

As I said, the film has a very dated feel, yet it is skilfully made and succeeds in generating a certain amount of tension. When it turns up on television (as it occasionally does) it is worth watching, if only as an example of a very different style of film-making to anything we might be used to today. 6/10

Spencer Teakle is a stage door Johnny with the shyest manner. He claims to be a journalist for "WOW!", one of those magazines whose sales depend more on pretty, underdressed women on the cover than their prose. Show girl Felicity Young doesn't believe him for an instant. She's right. He's actually the publisher of the magazine, left him by his uncle, who thought the repressed archeologist needed to broaden his interests.

Then the girl on the most recent cover dies of a sleeping pill overdose, wearing the same costume. Teakle digs through the back files and discovers other recent cover girls have died in the same way. Police Inspector victor Brooks thinks they're dealing with the sort of serial killer that he cannot catch: not only insane, but highly intelligent.

Given the premises of this movie, I was surprised at its intelligence and competence. Of course, it's fun to look at the series of young ladies wearing sexy clothes and little of them, but an unrecognizable Harry Corbett as the killer has a great role, and Teakle seems to be having a lot of fun. Good script, good direction, good acting: they combine to make a very good movie.

This movie for me is very much a sweet and sour affair. One the one hand I think Steptoe and Son is the finest comedy ever but also I think if it would never have happened we could and should have seen Harry H Corbett as one of Britains finest actors. This gem of a movie takes all the naivety of days gone by with the age old story of a bad man who thinks the world is changing for the worse and depravity rules. Blitzed into just 60 odd minutes this was obviously made as a B movie but is a world above anything it was made to run alongside. If this was remade today it would have to be a gruesome 18 cert affair probably filmed in the seedy parts of London and involve drugs and prostitutes ( Harry Brown springs to mind)but the way they get the message across without so much as a grain of smut is incredible. Absolutely fantastic piece of movie making and seems as relative today as it was when made over 50 years ago.

Harry H Corbett won acclaim as a stage actor early in his career but in 1962 he appeared on television for a 'one-off' Galton and Simpson Playhouse called 'The offer'. This was successful enough for Galton and Simpson to be asked to turn it into a series which they called Steptoe and Son. This was so popular that it ran for eight series ending in 1974.

Most people will only know Harry H Corbett for his portrayal of Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son. The quality of these performances, especially the little monologues and character sketches that were often included in the beginning of some of the later episodes, give an insight into the potential he had which was never realised.

Sadly, after 12 years as Harold Steptoe, Harry H Corbett was irredeemably typecast and found little serious dramatic work before his untimely death from a heart attack in 1982.

In Cover Girl Killer he is almost unrecognisable and his (believable) character could not be much further from his later typecasting.

This film is slightly clichéd but is worth seeing in its own right. However, I would advise anyone who has enjoyed Harry H Corbett in anything else to watch this if only to see what we missed of a potentially great dramatic career.