Conditions difficiles

The actors repeated themselves so many times I thought I'd scream.

From 1948, directed by Vernon Sewell, Uneasy Terms stars Michael Rennie as Slim Callaghan, a private detective.

In a nightclub, Callaghan's drink is drugged just as a client calls him. The client, a Colonel, is then found murdered at his home.

Callaghan makes it look like suicide, as he believes one of his stepdaughters has been framed. Moira Lister, Faith Brook, and Patricia Goddard are the stepdaughters.

Their stepfather received an anonymous letter, which you will know by heart by the end of this film. There was a manipulation afoot to alter the will, and one of the daughters is possibly working with a blackmailer (Nigel Patrick).

I figured out the ending midway as you will too. In another story this might have been a fabulous twist. In this film it's absurd. It's too long, too repetitive, with too many plots.

"Slim Callaghan" (Michael Rennie) is a PI with an habit of solving crimes using such unconventional methods as to annoy the police almost as much as he does the criminals. When a young woman drugs his Scotch at a night club, just as a would-be client tries to call him; then that same gent shakes off his mortal coil very shortly afterwards, his interest is well and truly piqued. Despite the protestations of one of the deceased man's three daughters, he heads to their home to investigate. Moira Lister, Faith Brook and Patricia Goddard play the daughters trying to manipulate the old man's will and one (or more) might be in cahoots with the dastardly Nigel Patrick ("Lucien"). The story is just too busy - too many threads that are only superficially developed and Nigel Patrick doesn't really quite fit his billing either. At times the narrative made me think I was listening to a radio play with pictures as there is a great deal of dialogue, and very little action until quite near the end when some of the duplicitous undercurrents come to the surface. The story is sound enough, but the film is just too stodgily delivered to remain engaging.

Before Willy Rozier got his hands on him, Grand National in Britain produced one film based on Peter Cheyney's Slim Callaghan, with Michael Rennie in the lead. In this one, Roy Russell asks Rennie to come to his country home to discuss a job. His stepdaughters have him worried. But when Rennie shows up, Russell is dead, and eventually all the women in the household -- widow and both daughters -- want him working particularly for her.

It's a good, strong mystery that I was able to partially solve, but not fully, and under the direction of Vernon Sewell, the mystery is given full rein to work out in all its confusing details. As a result, however, the characters and the non-mystery elements are rather constricted, even given the 90-minute length of the movie. Still, everyone works their own little melodramatic stereotype fully. With Joy Shelton, Paul Carpenter, Nigel Patrick, and Sidney Tafler.

Pretty good British Noir attempt, and with an intricate plot which does not allow any fridge visits. I don't agree with the reviewer above who felt it had a rough edge to it - to the contrary, I thought it was a very polite, bloodless form of noir. There is one fight (judo-style) and a shooting, which is shown in a flashback.

Having said that, I found 'Uneasy Terms' engrossing and with a labyrinthine plot, and with just one star that I recognized in the person of Michael Rennie. Actually, Nigel Patrick plays a heavy but he is more well-known in the UK than in the States. The story unfolds as Private Eye Rennie is drawn into a plot reminiscent of 'Farewell, My Lovely' as not two but THREE sisters are trying to 'adjust' their dead father's will (he was not dead when one of them contacted Rennie, you find out quickly). There then follows a number of plots and sub-plots, all of which makes sense at the end of the picture.

Very entertaining movie which also wins a Hand-Painted Mustache Cup for Most Inappropriate Musical Score, written and directed by Hans May. Very annoying, but don't let it deter you.

Pete Cheyney's private eye Slim Callaghan makes his first appearance in the urbane form of Michael Rennie as his path crosses that of youthful versions of Moira Lister, Faith Brook, Nigel Patrick, Paul Carpenter and Sydney Tafler in this genteel British attempt at the hard-boiled Hollywood gumshoe dramas of the forties.

This also proved the last gasp of Louis H. Jackson as head of production of British National Pictures, which went bankrupt the year this was released.