Flannelfoot

FLANNELFOOT is yet another detective thriller from director Maclean Rogers, who also handled the similarly-themed Paul Temple films and MARK OF THE PHOENIX. This one's about a notorious jewel thief (the oddly-monikered 'Flannelfoot') who turns to murder to cover up his crimes. The police are in hot pursuit in a chase that takes them across Europe.

There's really nothing about FLANNELFOOT that makes it stand out from the crowd; everything about it is distinctly ordinary, not least the lead performance from Ronald Howard (son of the more famous Leslie). Ronald Adam is better even if he's once again typecast as a detective, and there are supporting roles for Ronald Leigh-Hunt and Graham Stark, but it's all so, well, ordinary, that you won't really care.

The plotting is chock full of the usual twists and turns and red herrings and it only really starts getting lively for the climax (and Rogers once again can't resist utilising a rooftop setting for the ending). But FLANNELFOOT has a cheap, workmanlike quality to it which saps the viewer's enjoyment.

After some melodramatic title music, we open with that near obligatory scene of 1950s crime films, a woman singing in a nightclub to an audience of heavy smokers, in this case it's Diana Coupland in her film debut. In fact she lights one up herself as she goes into her rendition of 'fascinating man' It is post-war Berlin and Inspector Duggan (Ronald Adam), is apparently on the trail of a notorious black marketeer, who then makes an unsuccessful attempt on his life, seriously injuring him in the process.

We now switch to London, where Duggan, assisted by Detective-Sergeant Fitzgerald (Ronald Howard) is put on to the case of Flannelfoot, a ruthlessly successful burglar and jewel thief whom is believed to be connected with the events in Berlin, though Duggan claims he has lost his memory of much that happened there. Assisting the police is a newspaper proprietor and his ace crime reporter Frank Mitchell (Jack Watling). Attempts are made to trap the eponymous villain, but it is only after two murders and several more robberies that he is finally caught.

Though there was a notorious burglar in the 1930s known as Flannelfoot, whose sordid crimes took place far from the high society background depicted here, and the story is attributed to Ex-Inspector Jack Henry, it owes a great deal to authors Edgar Wallace and Francis Durbridge. A small-time cockney crook and informer (Graham Stark) is murdered right under the noses of the police and an outwardly respectable doctor is a fence of stolen jewels. There are shoals of Red Herrings, enabling the identity of the villain, 'a master of accents and disguise' and portrayed in classic stage fashion, wearing a slouch hat, dark glasses and muffler, to come as a satisfactory surprise. It all ends with a fight on a roof, a conclusion that director Maclean Rogers was so fond of that he used it in at least two other thrillers, PAUL TEMPLE RETURNS, and ASSIGNMENT REDHEAD, the latter incorporating footage of Ronald Adam by the ruins of the Berlin building. Like most of Rogers' films, FLANNELFOOT is silly at times, preposterous at others, but great entertainment for fans of British second features.

The title suggests a comedy, but is actually the alias of an arch criminal who occasionally kills someone to keep things interesting; presumably inspired by Edgar Wallace's 'The Ringer', the most recent film version of which had hit cinemas the previous year.

Set mostly in the stately home of newspaper baron Lord Wrexford, in which people spend most of the film pedestrianly lined up by director Maclean Rogers discussing the case; Rogers occasionally showing a modicum of visual imagination when somebody else gets murdered (there's a remarkably graphic shot of a dead man with his eyes open), and in the prologue set in Berlin which begins with a close-up a very young Diana Coupland as a leggy nightclub singer languidly lighting up (less surprising than it at first sounds to those who know she later dubbed Ursula Andress's singing voice in 'Dr.No').

A successful jewel thief and murderer keeps Scotland Yard on its toes, as well as on the back foot, as he continues to elude their clutches!! Enter languid, pipe smoking detective, Ronald Howard and his senior colleague, Ronald Howard. Both men seem disinterested and lacking in energy, hence the film plods along, and generally there is far too much talking and a conspicuous lack of action or tension. Most of the scenes are only enlivened by the amount of smoking and drinking which goes on in sitting rooms by various middle class men in suits and the ladies in their cocktail dresses. The storyline meanders aimlessly along, with the result that it robs the film of any direction or purpose. There is no attempt to flesh out any of the characters, who thus come across as unconvincing and one dimensional. This is a dull, low budget B film, which was made as a time filler.

A host of suspects fail to enliven this British cheapie in which a police detective searches for the titular master criminal. Some familiar faces amongst the cast, but it's otherwise totally forgettable.