Noose for a Lady

NOOSE FOR A LADY is a stylish British murder mystery that starts with a woman being convicted and sentenced for the murder of her husband. She has seven days until sentence is carried out. Then arrives a cousin (Dennis Price) from colonial Uganda who is determined to find the real killer. He goes to the quaint little English village she lives in and starts snooping. There's the worried step-daughter (Rona Anderson) who teams up with him to examine the various suspects. It seems everyone in town had a motive and chance to kill the mean old man. Story ends with the now clichéd gathering of all the suspects and the statement, "Someone in this room is the killer." No major stars in this little Brit thriller but everyone is quite good. Ronald Howard is the local doctor, Charles Lloyd Pack the quirky local trinket collector, Alison Leggatt and Melissa Stribling the lady and niece with a secret, Colin Tapley the fussy major, and Esma Cannon as Miss Ginch the town gossip. Great fun and a surprise ending. Plus with Dennis Price and Esma Cannon, what's not to like?

A really neat little thriller, the story plays fair and the killer comes as a real surprise. The cast work well together and Dennis Price is a reliable lead as the solver of the crime. Well worth 90 minutes of your time.

Dennis Price plays the urbane and English gentleman on leave from colonial Uganda where he is a district commissioner. However, when he goes to visit his cousin in a quaint English village, he finds to his horror that she is in prison, waiting to be hanged for poisoning her husband. The storyline is very much in the same mould of an Agatha Christie crime novel, with Price playing the sleuth, investigating all the potential suspects in the village. I enjoyed this low budget film as the acting is first rate and the dialogue is convincing, albeit somewhat dated for today's audiences. The ending of the film is rather theatrical and staged, as Price gathers all the suspects in one room stating that one of them is the murderer. However, despite this cliched scene, it's a film that is well worth watching just to see the incomparable Dennis Price in a role where he doesn't play the villain.

Pamela Alan is to hang for murdering her husband. Cousin Dennis Price comes in from Uganda and proposes to find the real murderer with the help of Rona Anderson, Miss Alan's stepdaughter.

Wolf Rilla's first feature feature after toiling for a decade in the BBC's television division is a rather straightforward mystery in which Price proposes to prove that the British justice system has gotten it all wrong with the skeptical help of police sergeant George Merritt. This includes all the traditional appurtenances of such stories, including the scene where he gathers all the suspects together. He has little trouble accumulating two additional corpses and several people with some excellent motives and opportunities. This makes one wonder what the police and the defense had been doing.

Rilla handwaves this away, and deals with the endless talking and the help of Walter J. Harvey's gracefully moving camera. The result is a good, if unexceptional murder movie although I suspected the actual murderer about halfway through. There were enough decent red herrings to keep me in doubt until the revelation.

John Hallam is poisoned and wife Margaret tried and sentenced to death for the crime. There's only seven days left to the execution when her cousin Simon Gale (Dennis Price) a colonial official from Uganda turns up unexpectedly and assisted by Margaret's stepdaughter Jill (Rona Anderson) endeavours to prove her innocence. He learns that Hallam was a sadist and blackmailer, not for money, but to torment his victims and that several of his acquaintances have something to hide. They include Upcott (Charles Lloyd Pack) whose wife has disappeared in mysterious circumstances and a major (Colin Tapley) responsible for the unnecessary death of troops under his command during the war. Local poacher Jonas Rigg (Robert Brown) has an important clue to the killer, but is himself poisoned before he can talk. And Margaret's time is running out...

Based on Gerald Verner's book of the same name, which in turn was the novelisation of his radio serial, it's no great surprise to find this, like so many other British films of its type, has an abundance of dialogue. There are also very few exterior shots, but it is gripping, with a considerable amount of tension. It's an archetypal 'whodunit' with a host of characters whom act in a suspicious manner or have some dark secret. There's the time-honoured gathering of all the suspects in a locked room: "One of you is the murderer". It's done with considerable power and effect though. Dennis Price, in the period after he had ceased to be a major star and before becoming a much admired character actor is good in the lead, as is Rona Anderson, who will always have a special place in the hearts of fans of British B movies of the era. Veteran character actress Esma Cannon is spiteful spinster Miss Ginch and popular opera singer Ian Wallace pops up in a small role as the pub landlord. Hardly seen since its original release, it's certainly worth watching, so well done to those DVD companies who are giving these modest but enjoyable films a new lease of life.