The Ghost Camera

THE GHOST CAMERA is a fun, near-forgotten little murder mystery laced with comedy and thrills. It overcomes the shortcomings of a simple storyline by offering a surfeit of action in the form of shadowy figures ever lurking in the background and determined to cause harm to our protagonists.

Our hero is a bumbling chemist, played by Henry Kendall, who was in the later and similarly-themed DEATH ON THE SET. As another reviewer has noted, he looks a bit like Harold Lloyd here, but he's great fun and his humorous asides and quirks makes him an instantly likable figure. Kendall finds an abandoned camera with a picture apparently showing a murder taking place. He develops the shot, but when it's stolen he must go on a quest of his own to deliver justice.

THE GHOST CAMERA has plenty of incident to propel every one of its 66 minutes. Ida Lupino plays the female protagonist and was only 15 years old when this film was made. John Mills also features and was only a little older at 25. Obviously both would go on to greater things but it's fun seeing them so young here. The supporting cast is rounded out by the dependable likes of Felix Aylmer. The film is obviously heavily dated and feels very tame these days, but it's also full of atmosphere and fans of the era will lap it up.

Driving back from a holiday, a man finds a camera in his car. Developing the negatives, he discovers a photo which shows a murder and others offering clues to the location. He identifies a young girl in another photo and she joins him on the trail.

Low budget second feature which has grown in reputation, with interesting locations and a script to make it worthwhile. Henry Kendall leads with early appearances by Ida Lupino and John Mills. Some scenes with Miss Lupino now feel uncomfortable given her age.

A unique opening sequence: a camera tumbles over a rocky ledge and lands in a car passing along the road below. The car's owner discovers the camera on arriving home; as he happens to have a darkroom, he decides to develop one picture from the camera in the hopes that it will lead him to the camera's owner. Instead he develops what appears to be a photo of one man stabbing another.

It's an unlikely scenario, but this picture is so well staged and performed that we hardly notice; the pace never lets up in this very entertaining mystery with excitement, romance and humor.

Henry Kendall is wonderful as the slightly nerdy hero who dives rather playfully into his investigation but displays both wits and persistence as the case develops in unexpected directions. He finds an additional clue when he develops the remaining pictures—a young woman standing under a street sign. He speaks with delicious irony to his assistant as they study the photograph: "The heroine of a mystery drama is always a ravishing creature." And eventually he tracks down….

Ida Lupino, the young woman in the photograph. They strike up a quick rapport and banter easily; but does she know more than she's telling about the brother who owned the camera and has seemingly disappeared? Lupino is truly excellent—bright, charming, deceitful, worried all at once. Not a bad leading lady performance from an actress who was only fifteen years old!

The dialog is good, the delivery perfect. Some neat camera work is also worth mentioning, especially the tense scene where the brother is finally tracked down—flashlights in the dark dart back and forth, eventually finding his form and then his frightened face. John Mills, also very young, is the brother in trouble.

A very stylish and witty production.

This is a truly solid early British thriller attempt. It might not be as good as the German and American work from the same period but overall it's a solid, original and interesting enough movie.

The concept and overall story of the movie are great- and original thriller material. The movie is however really short and therefor some elements in the story felt rushed. It didn't took enough time to build its tension and mystery.

The main character of the movie, played by Henry Kendall, is at times hilarious, at other times he's borderline annoying and at times he's just plain irritating as an over-the-top English-gentleman. So no, not a great consistency of the main character. It doesn't always help to make the movie and its story enjoyable and interesting to watch.

The movie screams for a remake really. The concept and story of the movie are good, mysterious and tense enough to make a real solid thriller, by todays standards, with. The movie its story really deserves a modern update.

As a whole is a quite solid early British take on the thriller-genre, which is still enjoyable and interesting enough to watch by todays standards, mainly thanks to the really original concept of the movie that is executed well enough but not to the max. I can however still really recommend this movie to the fans of early cinema and to those this movie is perhaps even a bit of an must-see, also a bit due to the very solid and at times quite revolutionary original editing, from none other than David Lean!

7/10

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"Ghost Camera" is a medium-budget British programmer that's interesting today mainly as a precursor to Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps" (man stuck in a boring routine finds both adventure and romance, involving the same woman), as well as Antonioni's and De Palma's much later "Blow Up" / "Blow Out" (a photograph that depicts a murder). It is also notable for some well-executed POV camera shots, as well as an early role for Ida Lupino in her pre-Hollywood ingénue phase. Other than that, it is nothing really special, and moves slower than an one-hour programmer should. Henry Kendall is OK in the lead, but not as funny as he was in the same year's (1933) "Shadow". ** out of 4.