Do You Know This Voice?

A very unusual and effective British thriller. Duryea stars as a down and out man who plots a kidnapping. A series of events lead to the child's death. Duryea is still desperate for cash and tries to make arrangements to pick up the ransom. Police become aware of the child's death and lay a trap. The kidnapper slips through the police net but there is a witness. A neighbour was at the phone booth and saw the kidnapper leave the scene.

What makes this unusual thriller so good is the relationship between the kidnapper and his wife. They are desperate people who wish they could turn back time and the kidnapping had never happened. Duryea is a slightly slimy crook, his wife (Gwen Watford) sees her husband's flaws but she remains devoted.

A twist shock ending really brings this story to a crashing conclusion.

A child is kidnapped in the mistaken belief the parents have money. A phone call is made from a public telephone. Then the corpse is found. The police speak to Isa Miranda, who used the public almost immediately after, but she was too involved with her own thoughts to notice anything. Nonetheless, she comes up with the idea of saying she did recognize the kidnapper to draw them out. The police say no, but she tells the newspaper she did, which forces the police to plant a plainclothesman in her house, and draw the attention of the kidnappers: next-door neighbors Dan Duryea and Gwen Watford. Duryea decides she has to die.

It's a very good cat-and-mouse game, with a fine performance my Signorina Miranda and a good one by Duryea., just clever enough to avoid the traps, spreading chaos as he goes along. With Peter Madden and Barry Warren.

The title of this film is the first of many feints this well-acted little thriller set in Bristol throws the audience, since it suggests a police procedural but then proves anything but. What seem to be being laid down as final twists are actually revealed surprisingly early all the better to confound expectations, while the relationship between the blundering villain and the one eyewitness pans out like a straight version of 'The Ladykillers' or 'A Fish Called Wanda'. As in most cheap British thrillers of the period, Arthur Lavis' black & white photography is beautifully clean and crisp.

When Mrs. Marotta sets about to telephone her Niece, she doesn't realise that she's inadvertently witnessing a blackmailer make a call to their victim.

Isa Miranda was terrific as Mrs. Marotta, a tough cookie who sets about catching the cruel miscreant herself, unaware that it's someone close to home. Fans of thrillers and mysteries will I'm sure enjoy this little mystery, it's well made, very well acted, and loaded with intrigue. The performances in general are excellent, I loved Dan Duryea, he was so menacing, so controlling, Gwen Watford was equally good as his desperate lover. I also enjoyed Peter Madden's performance as Supt. Hume, what a face.

After about fifteen minutes I thought I was watching a bit of a potboiler, but it's so much more then that, it's loaded with malice and spite, and features a great twist in the ending.

Impressive, 8/10

Dan Duryea went to the other side of the pond to star in this very neat and no frills British noir film about a child kidnapping. At least that's how it starts.

Like Bruno Hauptman when he dropped the infant Lindbergh baby climbing out a ladder and killing him, Duryea snatches a child going to a somewhat posh English public school and promptly kills him, he says by accident.

Isa Miranda spots the ransom call being made though she paid no real attention to the caller, Duryea gets paranoid. It's his paranoia because she is a neighbor that drives the rest of the film.

That and the fact that Duryea's wife played by Gwen Watford gives an almost perfect performance of a battered spouse who stands by her man come what may.

You'll like this film, especially with a couple of nice twists in the end that I didn't see coming.