Diplomatic Passport

This movie stars Marsha Hunt as the wife of Paul Carpenter, who works in the Foreign Service. They have just arrived in London for his new assignment and she is beat. As a result, when he gets a call in the middle of the night that he needs to be at a conference in Paris the next day, she tells him to go without her. While driving in France, his car is stolen. Miss Hunt wakes to a newspaper article that he and his wife have been killed in a road accident. Meanwhile, he checks into a Parisian hotel. John McLaren shows up from the embassy to tell him he'd better come along with him.

This is a slow and poorly paced thriller. Neither of these two people think of calling the American embassy, and the reasons for these incidents only begin to make their effects on the plot noticeable after about 40 minutes of the 65-minute print I watched (the IMDb claims the movie is actually 78 minutes). Instead, the two of them wander around London and northern France, being frustrated by bureaucracy. The Maguffin for this movie is never named.

While the acting seems at all times competent, this poorly written story makes hash of any attempt to draw any pleasure from this mess. Director Gene Martel, whose career on the big and little screen seems to have begun and ended the year this movie was released, never directed another feature. That leaves the count at one too many that he did.

"Diplomatic Passport" is a crime thriller that is too slow-paced and implausible to be of any real interest. While the plot has a couple of good ideas, and the acting is not bad, there are too many other defects that bring it down. The story concerns a diplomat and his wife who arrive in London, only to become enmeshed in a long series of inexplicable, annoying, and occasionally frightening events. They have to figure out what is going on, while trying to extricate themselves from some difficult situations. It's the kind of plot that in better hands could make a good story, but it does not come off very well here.

One major problem is that it moves far too slowly. There are long parts of the film showing the couple settling into their hotel room, ordering food, making telephone calls, and so forth - rather than building up suspense, it just gets boring. Most of these scenes are not worth watching in themselves, either, with the exception of a mildly humorous scene when the diplomat is in France and tries to explain to a French cook what it means to cook an egg "sunny side up".

The story is also too implausible to be taken seriously or to create any sustained suspense. The explanation for everything is not very satisfying, and the characters make too many obviously bad or irrational decisions, even allowing for their stress.

Marsha Hunt is fairly good as the diplomat's wife, especially considering that her character's actions are often not very believable. And the rest of the cast is mostly alright, given that their characters are routine. But there is just not enough here to make the film of serious interest.

This film ran for 65 minutes but had lost around 13 minutes.Presumably much of it plot exposition.Difficult to understand what it was all about.Incidentally how could Carpenter drive from London to Dover if it was too foggy for flights.His car is put on board the ship by a crane but drives of a ro ro ferry.

I hate to say this, but if "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is the worst movie ever made, then "Diplomatic Passport" ranks as the second worst. It's too bad, because Marsha Hunt was wonderful in "Pride and Prejudice" (1940), "Blue Denim"(1959), "Jigsaw"(1949), "Bombers B-52"(1957), "The Human Comedy"(1943), "None Shall Escape"(1944) to mention a few. She made at least 50 appearances on TV in episodes of such shows as "Matlock," "Star Trek", "Murder She Wrote," "The Twilight Zone," "Gunsmoke," "Zane Grey Theatre," etc., so it is obvious that those in the business highly respected her talent. She actually did a fair job in "Diplomatic Passport," and it wasn't her fault that the movie turned out so poorly, but the movie itself just couldn't be saved by Ms Hunt.