Home to Danger

The fifties seemed to be a propitious decade for entertaining British crime thrillers, and the briskly-paced 'Home to Danger' is a more than adequate time waster, and for Guy Rolfe fans it's an especially piquant treat, as he is on deliciously dashing form as the suave Robert Irving who heroically assists the beautifully distressed damsel Barbara Cummings (Rona Anderson) in her increasingly dangerous quest to discover the rather sinister truth behind her father's apparently motiveless suicide, as not too long after the reading of the will, the tenacious duo of Barbara and Robert dizzyingly find themselves murkily embroiled in a delightfully twisted tale of greatly nefarious duplicity, murderously inclined dope-fiends, and one diabolically despicable, moustache-twirling villain leaves little room for tedium in the iconic Hammer Films director's frequently rollicking, enjoyably old fashioned murder mystery, with tall, debonair matinee idol guy Rolfe making for a withering handsome, stoically sleuthing, straight-shooting hero, and it would be enormously remiss of me to omit the fine character work by future British acting icon Stanley Baker.

If, like myself, you were just wanting a glimpse of Stanley Baker before he was famous, don't bother. The man is literally unrecognisable, both facially and in screen personality, playing a mentally sub-normal servant in an elegant country house. Unfortunately he doesn't carry much conviction in the role, and just trogs about like the Holy Fool with Frankenstein thrown in. The Baker we love to hate was still a year or two away.

You should remember that this was only a supporting feature, just over an hour long, and as such, it provides undemanding fare. Sixty years on, this is its charm, with every cliché in place, almost an Agatha Christie story, with a shooting-party, the regulation retired major, some deferential police, and an upper-class smoothie (Guy Rolfe) squiring an impossibly beautiful Rona Anderson as the heiress whose new fortune has suddenly put her life in danger. All flavoured with the blend of cut-glass English and Shepperton cockney, without which no 1951 thriller was complete.

Alan Wheatley is just a little too unctuous as the boss of a children's charity, so we're not exactly unprepared for trouble in paradise. Terence Fisher's direction was generally praised, though it didn't really need that opening scene at the airport to establish that the young lady was returning from abroad. And Francis Lister fans may be interested to catch him here in his last film, still on fine form.

It starts very innocently with no danger at all as there is only one old man dead by suicide, at it seems. Guy Rolfe is there to help the young heiress Barbara (Rona Anderson) who gradually appears as a target for someone who wants to kill her for some reason, but at the shooting party organised for her execution, someone mysteriously shoots the executioner, whom no one in the vicinity has ever seen before. The plot and the mystery thickens.

There is a backward boy at the stables who stammers and seems to generally falter in everything he does, but he knows something and sees what no one else sees and makes observations. This is perhaps the most important and interesting character in the film, and he will continue acquiring more importance to the bitter end, as more and more people get murdered one way or the other, and there are some very nice foggy London scenes at night when Rona and Guy break in to investigate some dark secrets. That's where the actual film and excitement starts, which then mercilessly will increase to the desperate end.

The backward groom with something of a zombie about him is actually Stanley Baker at an early stage. He remains the most fascinating character, nothing wrong about the others, they are all excellent on a small scale, but the plot gets more and more knotty as it develops. There is more than one murderer here, and they will all surprise you.

HOME TO DANGER is one of Terence Fisher's most nondescript films as director. It's a low budget little thriller, set in and around a country house, that involves the death of a wealthy man and the reading of his will. His daughter inherits the estate and allows the owners of a small charity to live in the property with her, but somebody who is determined to get their hands on the wealth is willing to kill for it.

It's predictable and cheap-looking stuff indeed, and the most notable thing about the production is Fisher's direction, which makes the film look more expensive and stylish than it is. Otherwise the story plods along a bit and the performances are anything but invigorating. Rona Anderson has done better work elsewhere, Guy Rolfe feels somehow extraneous as the heroic character shoehorned into the plot, and only a youthful Stanley Baker really shines as the simple-minded manservant. I also found it hard to warm to a bunch of characters who took obvious delight in the killing of wildlife. The use of stirring music at the climax brings to mind the James Bernard score of Fisher's Dracula.