You Pay Your Money

Following an attempted burglary at the home of financier Steve Mordaunt, his assistant and trouble shooter Bob Westlake, (Hugh McDermott), and his wife Susie, (Honor Blackman) investigate. The mysterious behaviour of Mordaunt's lover Rosemary Delgado (Jane Hylton), a former mistress of a major fraudster, leads them to an extremist group desperate to obtain the writings of one Achmed, a 14th Century seer, which are included in a consignment of rare and valuable books which the financier is importing, and from which they intend to incite a revolution across the Middle East...

This plays like an early version of an episode of one of those crime/adventure/espionage series that flourished on British television in the sixties and early seventies. The plot could form the basis of an Avengers adventure with Cathy Gale, but here Honor Blackman is given little to do apart from looking as glorious and delectable as ever, not least on the occasion when she emerges from a swimming pool. She's later taken hostage by some of the motley gang of villains, and though threatening to kick leading thug Ferdy Mayne "in the teeth", while apologising for the "unladylike expression", that's about all her character is allowed to do in the situation. The striking Jane Hylton does what she can in the under-written part of the scheming Rosemary, and it's left unexplained how she knew more about the nature of some of the books than her wealthy lover did himself. Hugh McDermott is fine as the lead.

There are one or two examples of unusual casting. Basil Dignam, who almost always played army officers and other professional men is self-effacing chauffeur Currie, and Hugh Moxey struggles to conceal his plummy tones as the street wise Tom Cookson, the somewhat unlikely "uncrowned king of the Soho underworld". All good entertainment though.

For a film with a 'MacGuffin' about Middle-eastern unrest it seems slightly ironic when a headline on McDermott's newspaper inadvertently reveals that it was shot in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

The story is pedestrian, the acting indescribable and the sets seem buried from some other movie. No living people ever spoke dialogue like this, like a Home Service 'drama'. At one point Honor Blackman becomes almost animated when her car horn upstages her. McDermid creeps into the hotel like a cartoon wolf under cover of this dialogue by numbers. His detective skills are not exactly Hercule Poirot and the demands of the script cannot be the cause of his mugging to camera. All of the cast speak in turn- like an old- time radio phonecall, ship to ship. Hilton and Blackman show all the acting skills of photographic models in a clothing catalogue. 75 minutes I won't get back.

It is a rather confused narrative, with newly married Hugh McDermott and Honor Blackman a pair of for-hire smugglers. They're hired by Ivan Samson to shift a couple of crates of smuggled books, while Samson enjoys the company of Jane Hylton. Soon enough, however, competing forces wearing fezzes stick their noses into the action, and McDermott bends his efforts towards getting back his wife.

Although she is third billed, Miss Blackman gets a lot of starlet build-up in this cheap movie, showing off her figure in in a one-piece bathing suit, and her athleticism just as the plot goes silly. There's a couple of unlikely bouts of fisticuffs and a shoot-out, and director Maclean Rogers avoids long takes and dialogue scenes with more than one person in a shot. It shows itself to be a cheap B movie throughout, but there is some nice chemistry between McDermott and Miss Blackman in the opening sequences.

This B feature from Butchers has so much plot that you tend to get lost in its labyrinthine machinations.There are many lost threads so you just give up trying to work out what is happening.Honor Blackman looks as glamorous as ever,and seems to have a new outfit for every scene.She is still acting having been starred in last Saturday@ Casualty.It is obvious that Botchers could not afford even a second rate American actor so they chose Hugh McDermott as the lead.The cast is quite reasonable and the direction brisk though some of the fight scenes are a bit pathetic .Yet this is nevertheless an entertaining thriller and worth a viewing.

Thus says Hugh McDermott in this lively but inconsequential little Butchers quickie; and his words are borne out by the eye-watering lack of respect with which he paws a batch of supposedly priceless, centuries-old volumes filched by the Nazis from the monastery at Monte Cassino in 1944.

Second and third-billed are glamorous fifties femmes Jane Hylton & Honor Blackman; the former nearing the end of her tenure as a blonde Bad Girl, the latter - ironically older than Hylton but who outlived her by over forty years - still five years away from 'The Avengers'. Blackman has already adopted the sleek mane she wore for the remainder of her long life, and for much of the film wears trousers and a stylishly-worn scarf; but here it's Hylton who packs heat while Blackman instead uses one of her high-heeled shoes to put a goon's lights out.