Dilemma

Dilemma came on Channel 5 some time ago and I was pleased I taped it. It is quite an obscure movie.

A school teacher returns home from work and finds the dead body of a man in the bathroom. He doesn't know how it got there. His wife is missing as well, so there could be some connection here. He wraps the body with the shower curtain and takes it downstairs where he eventually digs up the floorboards in the living room. He keeps getting interrupted though, by a nosey neighbour, a blind piano tuner and a young boy who has come for his weekly piano lesson. He buries the corpse eventually and puts the floorboards back. His wife then arrives. What does she Know?

This is quite a good little movie and the nosey neighbour is a typical occurrence in the UK. There are some where I live. The piano tuner being blind is a little far fetched though.

Look out for Dilemma on TV listings. Not bad at all.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

Cheapo British B-picture which does not live up to its description. The initial premise is interesting enough, but any "thrills" are dissipated by the slack plotting. The "surprise" ending is signalled well before the end.

This film isn't really a thriller, but it is successful in being a suspense filled drama. This film is actually quite a gem. The plot and entire pretext for the film are simple but takes a twist at the end which I don't think anybody could predict. The final explanation for the dead body in the end is not complex, but it is extremely clever and not cliched like 99.9% of big Hollywood blockbusters. It was actually a very refreshing modern ending, which I was not expecting considering the film was made in the early 1960s, this helps push the film above simply being a low-budget British affair.

The whole thing is shot in a believable and completely intruiging way, yes this film is simple, but that is what makes it so brilliant. It works because it is believable -he is an ordinary man, who lives in an ordinary house, not some mansion in Beverly Hills. The film is fuelled by suspense over what the schoolmaster is going to do with the body, all the more so because his nosey neighbour cannot stop interferring.

I found this film very similar to "The Nanny" starring Bette Davis, they are very similar in that they simply tell a story, without enormous complications and huge Hollywood overcomplicating budgets getting in the way. Some people will probably not enjoy it for it's simplicity, because they are so used to big budget blockbusters, but if your willing to give this film a try you will find it is actually extremely enjoyable. If it was available on VHS I would probably buy it. 10 out of 10.

This is a rather better than average B feature, set in a modest respectable middle-class '30s-'50s suburb of houses with tidy front gardens, net curtain and a nosy neighbour.

A bored middle-aged housewife notices some odd occurrences at her neighbours house - a scream, the sudden departure of the wife, the return of the husband, his curious activities throughout the day - carrying bags of cement indoors, carrying a large tin bath also indoors. All very suspicious. She consults her husband who knows her habits and reassuringly dismisses her concerns.

So far precisely an episode of One Foot in the Grave - the type of neighbourhood, bizarre happenings with very dark interpretations.

Only the dark events are not imagined but completely real - as the audience to this crime-mystery know in the first few minutes. The happenings are completely beyond the imaginings of the suspicious neighbour.

I didn't guess the final revelation. Although it is fairly engrossing, a better production would have ramped up the tension and made the wife's manner less even as the conclusion approached.

My lasting impression is that One Foot in the Grave, now an established comedy classic was a genius comic twist on this fairly ordinary original. Or perhaps I am just imagining it?

This was a company founded by and for film technicians.This was their last production as B films were being phased out.Whilst they found a distributor in Bryanston,no cinema circuit would play it.So it ended up being sold to television.It was felt that audiences would be unlikely to accept the basic premise.It is though an entertaining film.