The Dark Man

A terrific British B movie of the period! One of the filming locations listed is Camber Sands, but the denouement takes place at Dungeness where the Lighthouse and the Railway Station of the Hythe/Romney and Dymchurch Narrow Gauge Railway feature strongly - the line swings around the Dungeness terminus and can be seen quite clearly.

You can punch a lot of holes in this one.

From 1951, The Dark Man, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, stars (and is) Maxwell Reed. He was Joan Collins' first husband, and ever since I heard what she said about him, I've never been able to stand him. Good thing he always plays creeps.

In this film, on a lonely road, he (Dark Man) kills a cab driver who could recognize him (his second murder that we know about). A young actress, Molly Lester (Natasha Perry) out on her bike hears the shot and sees him in the distance.

When a fellow thespian reads that the police are looking for witnesses, a reluctant Molly tells an officer (Edward Underdown) what she knows, and he informs her that her life is in danger. She will have to be guarded. There's a romantic interest, though he's 43 and she's 21.

Well, when you're being guarded, that means all the time, one would think. In Molly's case, I guess it's when they get around to it. At one point, Dark Man breaks into her apartment, removes the lightbulbs, and attacks her.

The guy has killed twice. Does he kill her? No. He turns on the gas. She lives.

Okay, then he picks her up in a cab. He wants to kill her because she may recognize him. Obviously she doesn't know who the heck he is or why he is heading out to a remote place.

It's well photographed, keeping Dark Man tall and in the dark. I wouldn't have recognized him either.

Short but effective suspense thriller shot on England's south-east coast. Although we know the bad guy from the start, the suspense is nevertheless maintained until the final shoot out on the rifle ranges which provide an unusual setting. Accents & dialogues typical of 50s England. Definitely worth viewing !

Actress Natasha Parry is bicycling on the road when she hears a couple of shots, and sees a dark man emerge from the woods to stand by a standing auto. She thinks nothing of it, but in the dressing room that night, her fellow actress tells her the police are looking for witnesses. Miss Parry says she saw nothing useful, but her friend points out that it's always useful for an actress to get her name in the papers. Miss Parry reports the very little she knows to the police, and thinks that will be the end of it... until Superintendent of Police William Hartnell sees the item. With the unknown man having committed two murders, he thinks she's in for it, so he sends down Detective Inspector Edward Underdown to guard her, and possibly catch the dark man before he can kill her.

It's a handsomely shot movie, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, with an intelligently plausible arc of action that ends in a chase across the seashore in the darkling. It's photographed in long takes by Eric Cross; the lengthening shadows convert a taut policier into a shadowy noir at the end.

I noticed the weighted average user rating on IMDb.com for this film was only 5.6 and mainly voted for by males/females aged 45+.I thought it a cracking murder mystery and watching it tonight on YouTube.com and I voted 7/10.I had just started infants school when this was filmed in 1951 (I am now 65) but was attracted to it by seeing Edward Underdown in the cast list and seeing it was a wholly British film.The afore mentioned actor (1908-1989) played "Harry Chelm" in the cult John Huston 1953 film "Beat The Devil" playing the husband of my personal sex goddess film favourite, the late Jennifer Jones.

Like another reviewer I enjoyed seeing England as I remember it in my childhood.We too holidayed in Kent in the late 1940s/early 1950s.I particularly enjoyed seeing the almost complete absence of private cars and how one could park almost anywhere without seeing those wretched double yellow lines/no parking/"resident parking only" signs we see today.Maxwell Reed seems to be a favourite of the few reviewers above and I too have the DVD of him in "The Clouded Yellow" (1951) starring another of my raven haired favourite film actresses, the late Jean Simmons.

I was intrigued by the user comment that Edward Underdown (1908-1989) was much older than Natasha Parry who plays "the love interest" and indeed she is apparently still with us being born in 1930 and so was only 21 when this was filmed, while Edward was 43 during filming a sizable age difference.You rarely see detectives kissing the heroine on films of this age but Edward made a wry comment that "little detectives have to be born sometimes"!