Rogue's Yarn

The opening scene between Derek Bond and Nicole Maurey was so stilted I fully expected it to be revealed to be a scene from a play in front of an audience.

But no, it was the actual plot being hatched; and throughout the film stagy dialogue scenes indoors were punctuated by the occasional breath of fresh air provided by scenes shot outdoors; especially those where director Vernon Sewell was permitted to indulge his evident love of boats. Fortunately the plot is sufficiently interesting to continue holding your attention until the dramatic final shot of Ms Maurey (on board a boat, naturally).

The resemblance of Elwyn Brook-Jones's pipe-smoking detective to Columbo has already been pointed out. But Sewell evidently also had in mind insurance investigator Barton Keyes in 'Double Indemnity'; which is actually name-checked at one point by a character who says of Bond "If this was a movie I'd say he dunnit!" and that "If Edward G. Robinson were here he'd have the murderer!!"

ROGUE'S YARN is an intriguing little murder mystery, shot in Brighton by director Vernon Sewell and featuring his famous yacht that had previously appeared in the likes of GHOST SHIP alongside many other productions. As some other reviewers on here have noted, the structure of the film and the content make it feel very much like a COLUMBO episode, with the murderer introduced to the viewer at the outset.

The dashing Derek Bond plays an adulterous husband who plots to bump off his invalid wife with the help of his mistress. All goes according to plan, until a dogged detective shows up and threatens exposure. What follows is a fun police procedural movie, with a lot of screen time spent on the unravelling of a perfect alibi.

The unknown Elwyn Brook-Jones stars as the detective, with the familiar Hugh Latimer in comic relief support as his sergeant. I wasn't familiar with Brook-Jones before this film, but the Roy Kinnear lookalike does a good job at bringing his working class character to life. He makes Walker both a realistic and likable presence. Although ROGUE'S YARN is undoubtedly a B-movie in terms of budget and narrative, Sewell is one of those directors with the capability to make any film look good and there's a great suspense sequence involving a leaking gas tap.

Vernon must have been a fan of Freeman Wills Crofts. The detective here could easily have been Inspector French - a portly pipe-smoker determinedly dismantling an alibi involving a devilish bit of engineering on a means of transport. He gets stuck but finally makes the breakthrough. He needs to travel to France, three times I think. He responds with stoicism to the doubts of his superior. A little more affability would have made the match perfect. There is surely a debt here to Crofts.

This British B movie, one with important nautical elements in its plot, reminded me of an episode of Columbo. It's a tale of murder and detection where we know "who dunnit", and how the killer fixed himself the "perfect alibi", from the start.

Egged on by his greedy mistress, a middle aged man of what was once called "good breeding", kills his rich, termagant of a wife (who was expected to die, but is in recovery) for her money, and gives himself a seemingly unbreakable alibi. Initially the murder appears to have been the work of a burglar, but enter our hero, Inspector Walker, a short, not handsome or attractive police detective, who cleverly suspects the husband almost from the start, and sets about looking for the evidence to get him. Walker is a much more conventional type than Columbo, but still something of a maverick as an investigator (though he doesn't harass and irritate his suspects to death!) nor is he such an eccentric personality as Peter Falk's character, there are no real moments of Columbo reminiscent comedy in the portrayal. Unlike Columbo, Walker is often seen working with a police underling (the man playing that part resembling comic actor Edward Everett Horton!).

Elwyn Brook-Jones, whose appearance meant he often played villainous parts on screen, here gets a chance to be a good guy (sadly this distinctive actor died in 1962 aged only 50). Derek Bond (once a screen Nicholas Nickleby, whose career was on the slide by the time this movie was made) is the distinguished looking murderer. Nicole Maurey was a very attractive lady, but here she overacts at times as the grasping mistress - a character who is somewhat inconsistently written.

There is one completely risible scene where our detective escapes death in a way that stretches coincidence way beyond the even remotely plausible, but on the whole I quite enjoyed the film. The performance by Mr Brook-Jones interested me enough to find out more about this rather obscure character actor.

Derek Bond has a waspish wife who is bedridden. He's carrying on an affair with Nicole Maurey, who wants to know when he's going to get a divorce and they can be together. He doesn't want a divorce, so he murders her with an airtight alibi: he was at sea piloting his boat to France at the time. This looks like a great alibi, since we see him docking the boat and having French Inspector Jean Serret tell him about his wife's murder, even though we have already seen him climbing out of the sea to murder the missus.

Very clever. It takes Inspector Elwyn Brook-Jones about thirty minutes to crack the alibi, but he needs proof to get a warrant for Bond's arrest. Can he do it over the objections of his superior? With the physical evidence show up in time? Frankly, I never had any doubt.