The Painted Smile

Somewhat complicated British Neo Noir with two separate stories that eventually connect, connected to a murder that begins with a scheming couple who make their living taking a targeted man back home: sultry blonde Liz Fraser does the rudimentary work while her partner Mark (Peter Reynolds), plays the angry jealous husband aka the badger game...

But while Liz's Jo Lake arrives at a nightclub to find the right prey, back home Peter's killed by a brooding crippled psychopath played by Kenneth Griffith, usually cast as a wimp but not here...

And yet this isn't really his story, or even the first-billed Mrs. Fraser: instead, the young man she'd picked up before realizing her con-artist partner was dead, takes over the leading role...

Enter Tony Wickert as Tom, a plain college student who, celebrating at that nightclub, had just won a hundred bucks, loudly bragged upon by buddies including David Hemmings and Ray Smith, all picking up on three younger girls while a singer croons two spooky, reverberated songs...

One that's also the film's title, THE PAINTED SMILE (aka MURDER CAN BE DEADLY), sustaining in the young man's head after he's accused of murdering the stiff lying-in-wait in the bad girl's apartment and then, in the usual Wrong Man fashion... and with tearful girlfriend Nanette Newman fretting on the sidelines... it's a race-against-time in yet another time-filler b-crime by veteran director Lance Comfort...

Who should have spent more initial energy on the scheming couple before those poor kids got caught up in someone else's scheming ways that we never had time to relish, especially with such a potentially cunning femme fatale in the ultimately underused Liz Fraser.

A plan to play the aggrieved husband bursting in act goes wrong, and instead a soon to be married man finds himself embroiled in a murder.

Despite a rather complex plot, this film is only about an hour long, it's an hour that you'd be well spent watching. Definitely a B Movie, so don't expect car chases or anything elaborate, just a solid mystery.

It's definitely a bit of a pot boiler, easy to imagine this shown before a main feature, but there are several plus points. Best element for me, is of course Liz Fraser, proving she's not just a pretty face, I can't actually recall seeing her cast as a similar character before, she's quite ruthless, it's a quality performance, she of course looks beautiful too, but her acting is the star element.

It's well paced, it's atmospheric, I really would recommend it, 7/10.

I rather enjoyed Kenneth Griffith's performance here as the malevolent "Kleinie". He finds himself caught up in the amateur shenanigans of "Jo" (Liz Fraser) and "Mark" (Peter Reynolds). Now this pair have an habit of using her as a lure for young men whom she invites back to her flat only for her "husband" to arrive and try a little extortion. Well, they hit on the newly flush lad - "Tom" (Tony Wickert) - but when she returns to finish the sting, "Kleinie" calls alerting her to a shocking surprise in the bedroom. The young "Tom" is too drunk to offer much resistance to her rather ill thought-out plan and before he knows it he is being sought by the police for murder. What now ensues is a fairly run-of-the-mill British crime noir as both "Tom" and "Jo" have to stay one step ahead of the pursuing police whilst their nasty nemesis has plans for them of his own. Fraser was a competent enough comedy actress, but here she hasn't really the gravitas to engender much of a sense of danger. Wickert fares slightly better as the not-so-hapless youth - once he sobers up - but there isn't much jeopardy here and as the plot shuttles along we are well aware of how things are going to turn out. It's only an hour long, though, and Lance Comfort doesn't let it hang about - it moves along well enough with a basic but adequate production and a rather hectic score from Martin Slavin to keep it watchable, if forgettable.

It's only a regular B feature, but Lance Comfort had the knack for keeping even the shabbiest B plot interesting and fascinating. Of particular interest is the awkward scene of the discovery of the body, as Liz Fraser comes home with a drunken lad from her hooking club and gets that horrible phone call from 'Kleinie' who tells her to get rid of the rubbish in her bedroom. She has no idea what he is talking about and naturally gets curious, while her hooked visitor Tom follows her in and they stumble over a dead knifed body, while Tom in his besotted state grabs the knife and pulls it out, and that finishes the perfect set-up of awkwardness. All the rest is just mad chases for the truth, for the merry gentlemen at the pub where one of them got hooked by both the police and 'Kleinie's' hoodlums, and the rest will just be too obvious. One of Tom's merry companions at the club is a very young David Hemmings, while Kenneth Griffith as 'Kleinie' takes the prize in yet another of his uncanny characters of meticulous evil.

Liz Fraser and Peter Reynolds have been playing the badger game. She lures a man with some money to her room, and he breaks in on them, playing the angry husband. She wants out, but is persuaded to give it one more go. She lures drunken Tony Wickert up, but Kenneth Griffith calls her, and asks how she's going to clear up the mess in the bedroom. It's Reynolds' bloody corpse. She persuaded Wickert to take the corpse, drive into the country and bury it, while she packs to leave town. Wickert, drunk, attracts the attention of the police, and abandons the car. When he sobers up, he goes to his friends for help. He and Miss Fraser have the police looking for them.... and Griffith.

There's no mystery here, but it is a pretty tight little suspense story, largely from Wickert's viewpoint. There's some nice. Owes of St. Pancras Station, and it's good to seeMiss Fraser, usually cast as a ditzy blonde, doing some acting in a minor but nicely run drama.