The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

During a charity match between the Arsenal and Trojans, one of the players collapses and dies. Initially it is thought bizarre, but it soon turns out to be murder by an unknown poison. Summon Leslie Banks, a Scotland Yard inspector with a different hat for every phase of the investigation, from his important job of directing a revue!

Banks gives an interesting and wide-ranging performance here, varying between almost clownish to menacing, offered as a deliberate choice for the investigation. He's most of the movie to me, but then, despite having played high-school soccer, I am bemused by the idea of it as a spectator sport, fiercely supported by rabid fans.

Nonetheless, that was the selling point of this movie, showing the team and staff of the Arsenal, then at the top of their standing among professional teams. About a dozen of the personnel appear, and the game itself was one played between Arsenal and Brentford, with interpolations from 'Varsity football.

I found the mystery itself rather dry and gimmicky compared to Banks' entertaining performance. However, I also have little doubt that fans of the game and of Arsenal will find this a fine time-capsule movie.

Did you know that the game played at Highbury (The Arsenal Stadium,) before the outbreak of World War II, wasn't a big League match, an important FA Cup tie or even an International, it was in fact the game that was played in the film!!! Not alot of people know that! (But they do know now!)

As an Arsenal fan I enjoyed this film. These days you wouldn't get members of any top football team to appear together and be apart of the plot, couldn't afford them. Decent plot and it had good pace. Lesley Banks as the Detective in charge was the star of the film along with those hats!

No I was not born when this film was made but I was a season ticket holder there between 1961 and 2006.I can confirm that this film faithfully reproduces the dressing room areas of the ground.I would like to correct factual errors by other reviewers.Firstly this was not the last game at the stadium before the outbreak of war.This was the game v Sunderland played on September 1939 when Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-1.However the game does not count in the records as the league season was abandoned with the outbreak of war.Secondly it did not take 25 years for Arsenal return to glory.They won the league in 1947 and 1953 and the cup in 1950.This is an a very enjoyable film,which is very nostalgic for Arsenal supporters who fondly remember Highbury.

The third, last and - according to Rachel Low, the best - of three quality potboilers shot at Dehham during the spring and early summer by G. & S. Films (formed the previous year by Josef Somlo, who had arrived in Britain as a refugee in 1935) after an ambitious Technicolor production of 'The Mikado'.

In Low's words 'The Arsenal Stadium Mystery' "turned a routine newspaper serial into a lively and imaginative whodunnit with a footballing background". Thorold Dickinson (who had worked in a minor capacity on 'The Mikado') put his hours spent in the dark at the Film Society to good use with Soviet-style photography & editing of the football scenes; while his friend Leslie Banks enjoys himself as a detective with flamboyant taste in hats.

(Banks had ironically lost an eye in the First World War, since Edmond Knight was to lose one in North Africa in 1943; the same year that Richard Norris - also one of the footballers - was himself killed in action.)