Calling Paul Temple

Like many films based on radio plays; the writing tends to forget we also have images to process too and so they run a bit to language. This gentle detective murder-mystery falls into that trap and the wordy dialogue robs the thing of pace somewhat. That said, John Bentley and Dinah Sheridan deliver engaging, cheery performances as they are brought in by Scotland Yard to assist in the search for "Rex" - a mysterious blackmailer/murderer who is preying on women. Features some eerily lit scenes in Canterbury which add significantly to the tenseness of the drama with some hypnotism and fisticuffs at the end.

The second Paul Temple film and John Bentley's first in the role begins with an atmospheric scene on a train possibly inspired by 'A Study in Scarlet' and towards the end has elements that had been employed in the 'Dr Mabuse' films.

Between whiles we get shootings, an explosion, and a closeup of a corpse with open eyes fifteen years before Herschel Gordon Lewis claimed to have pioneered it. Yet it remains for the most part talky, overlong and dull; and only carried a 'A' certificate when first released.

The film's biggest extravagances appear to have been the ladies' wardrobes and sending the leads on a day trip to Canterbury (during which passers by can be seen looking at the camera).

First of four B films adapted from very popular radio programmes of the 40s and 50s Highly enjoyable for fans of old fashioned mysteries. Nice location work in Canterbury though matte shots from cars involving rolling scenery date it. Leads both good including Sheridan who would move onto A films including the wonderful "Genervive"

Sort-of likeable ragbag of every thriller cliché imaginable about a serial killer, in which amateur sleuth Paul Temple is called in by the professional cops to more or less tell them how to do their job. It has all the usual ingredients of the type: coincidences, red herrings, witnesses who are bumped off precisely at the moment when they are saying 'the killer is ...' (you can get away with this once, perhaps, but three times??), a villain who is obvious from the start, a laughable hypnosis scene (only the hypnotist can bring the victim out of the trance, except that Temple can do it as well, by using the magic of speech!), and a final, Poirot-style gathering of every suspect still alive in a room, and a fist fight. Temple and his wife Stevie cheerfully brush off the killer's attempts to shoot them, blow them up, and drown them like it's just another day of routine events in the Temple diary. Luckily, they have a vaguely racial stereotype of a servant, complete with funny foreign accent, to assist them.

A couple of plus points - some nice shots of 1940s Canterbury, and a night club song called Lady on the Loose, with a lyric that might have come from an Amy Winehouse song, such as 'I want a man who's true to me to the end of the night,' and 'Ladies, shut your windows, lock your doors, the man I'm after might be yours' I can't trace the song, partly written by Steve Race.

Paul and Steve Temple are back, even if this time they're John Bentley and Dinah Sheridan. They're helping Scotland Yard track down a blackmailer who signs his murders "Rex". This puzzles the Yard, since dead women rarely pay ransom.

I agree with their reasoning. The trail leads to Abraham Sofaer, who's a psychiatrist and hypnotist, his suspicious-seeming secretary Margaretta Scott, who comes to Bentley for help, then seems to almost get him and Miss Sheridan blown up. Then there's..... oh, everyone, to the extent that I was growing suspicious of Shaym Bahadur, who plays their valet, Rikki. He didn't look like that in the last movie!

The mystery aspect of this one is not as good as the last one. The red herrings get piled on in such confusion that when the bad guy was revealed, it seemed a random choice. Canterbury seems to be about three minutes by car from Scotland Yard. In addition, the movie-serial nature of this movie stuck out, including a couple of cornball cliffhangers that went out of style in the 1930s, and the sort of canned music that Universal kept in stock to be plugged in just before the the car went over the cliff and the gong sounded.

Sigh. Well, it's Maclean Rogers directing; I'm sure that if you gave him a good budget, a good script and some real talent, he could direct a heck of a good movie. I don't think anyone ever did. This was Nettlefold Studios with Butcher's Film Service distributing, so money was tight; besides, the character was established on the radio and in the first movie, so it was likely a matter of they didn't need it good, they needed it Tuesday. At least there's some nice second-unit shot of Canterbury and some pleasant night-time shooting by Geoffrey Faithfull.