Do You Know This Voice?

Dan Duryea went to the other side of the pond to star in this very neat and no frills British noir film about a child kidnapping. At least that's how it starts.

Like Bruno Hauptman when he dropped the infant Lindbergh baby climbing out a ladder and killing him, Duryea snatches a child going to a somewhat posh English public school and promptly kills him, he says by accident.

Isa Miranda spots the ransom call being made though she paid no real attention to the caller, Duryea gets paranoid. It's his paranoia because she is a neighbor that drives the rest of the film.

That and the fact that Duryea's wife played by Gwen Watford gives an almost perfect performance of a battered spouse who stands by her man come what may.

You'll like this film, especially with a couple of nice twists in the end that I didn't see coming.

The title of this film is the first of many feints this well-acted little thriller set in Bristol throws the audience, since it suggests a police procedural but then proves anything but. What seem to be being laid down as final twists are actually revealed surprisingly early all the better to confound expectations, while the relationship between the blundering villain and the one eyewitness pans out like a straight version of 'The Ladykillers' or 'A Fish Called Wanda'. As in most cheap British thrillers of the period, Arthur Lavis' black & white photography is beautifully clean and crisp.

When Mrs. Marotta sets about to telephone her Niece, she doesn't realise that she's inadvertently witnessing a blackmailer make a call to their victim.

Isa Miranda was terrific as Mrs. Marotta, a tough cookie who sets about catching the cruel miscreant herself, unaware that it's someone close to home. Fans of thrillers and mysteries will I'm sure enjoy this little mystery, it's well made, very well acted, and loaded with intrigue. The performances in general are excellent, I loved Dan Duryea, he was so menacing, so controlling, Gwen Watford was equally good as his desperate lover. I also enjoyed Peter Madden's performance as Supt. Hume, what a face.

After about fifteen minutes I thought I was watching a bit of a potboiler, but it's so much more then that, it's loaded with malice and spite, and features a great twist in the ending.

Impressive, 8/10

Dan Duryea is once again a man down on his luck, so he opts for a new profession as a kidnapper. His inexperience shows as he kidnaps the son of some working class people who couldn't afford the ransom anyway, plus he accidentally kills the child. No spoiler here, this all comes out in the first fifteen minutes and just as exposition. On revealing that, he tells his wife who is also in on the plot, that the boy was "lucky to have died clean" - as in free of sin.

How considerate Dan! Otherwise, Dan's a nice guy who hung around in Britain after the war, he's nice to his neighbors, and that's where the tide turns. It seems that one of those neighbors, played by Isa Miranda, caught a glimpse of the kidnapper making a ransom call. She offers to help the police capture the man by making it public that she saw him and then just sitting as bait for the criminal.

She only saw the caller from the back, but that's a minor point as long as the caller doesn't know that.

All of this happens in the first twenty minutes, so don't worry about too much being spoiled. Some of it is only referred to anyway as it happens off-screen or even before the film starts.

From here on, as far as the story goes you're on your own. Unfortunately the director Frank Nesbitt not only telegraphs the ending, he writes it in the sky with gigantic letters by fixing the camera on a key prop that comes into play later.

Otherwise, the performances are tops and while it's obviously done on the cheap, that only enhances the look of the film which isn't exactly set among the upper class anyway.

A good suspenseful crime story, with some great performances, especially by Dan Duryea as the scheming bad guy. I liked his line when he realises what might happen if he's ever found out - "before ya know it, I'll be doing the trapdoor fandango". Well worth watching.