The Ghost Camera

This is no great work of art but once you've watched this for five minutes, even if your dog starts to recite Shakespeare whilst riding a unicycle around your living room, you will not be able to avert your eyes from this wonderful nonsense.

Henry Kendall who was marvellous in Hitchcock's superb subversive RICH AND STRANGE is just as marvellous in this. He plays a what wound be called a bit of a nerd today. He's so absurdly fuddy duddy that he's far too silly to be believable but that really doesn't matter. This is just a daft, fun adventure story, it's not meant to be an Scarface! The brilliant voice he does is reminiscent of Harry Enfield's Mr Cholmondley-Warner if anyone remembers that great 1990s sketch show? He's very amusing but more importantly, he's very likeable.

Ida Lupino is also lovely in this even though she was just fifteen years old! She's such a good actress and with Henry Kendall being rather scatty, it's down to her to hold this all together. Who says kids grow up faster these days! Considering some of the appalling acting around in this era both here and in Hollywood Ida Lupino is outstanding - and just fifteen as well!

Director Bernard Vorhaus was constantly frustrated making the quota quickes where the objective was to provide reels of film to the cinemas at less than £1 per foot! Twickenham Studios' boss Julius Hagen therefore let him experiment as much as he could within budget and even allowed him to take his own camera home at weekends to get some location shots. With THE GHOST CAMERA, Vorhaus had fun and turned what should have been a cheap, bland, mundane hour and a bit of wallpaper viewing into a cheap but thoroughly enjoyable, professionally and imaginatively produced piece of entertainment.

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.

"The Ghost Camera" is a very early but nifty British mystery with a rudimentary screenplay but also a surprisingly sinister premise. The intelligent but lonely chemist John Gray returns from another unexciting holiday and notices there's an unknown camera on the backseat of his car. The development of the film results in photo-evidence of something that strangely looks like murder, but then the camera and negatives are stolen from his practice. The boring chemist quickly turns into an adventurous detective as he and gorgeous Mary track down the origin and location of the other photographs on the film. For obvious time and budget-related reasons, this film hasn't got any special effects or famous stars and thus it completely relies on the its compelling storytelling and great use of sophisticated British humor. John Gray is a typically nervous and talkative character and his clumsy interactions with his female counterpart are genuinely pleasant. Another joy to behold is Victor Stanley as Gray's honest but very simple-minded assistant. The whole story, including the little twist at the end, isn't all that overwhelming or extraordinary but the pace is good and the settings are very original and beautiful. A fun trivia element is that director David Lean, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time with pure classics on his repertoire like "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia" did one of his very first editing jobs for this film. Recommended!

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.

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.