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How ironic that Eric Portman's opening volley should be an ill tempered retort to girlfriend, Dulcie Gray for leaving him HANGING about for an hour and a half. Her plausible explanation of a prolonged delay on the Tube failing to quell his ire.

Portman is Victor Colebrooke, a man not so much haunted, as fully immersed and entirely consumed by the spectre of his deceased father, a notorious hangman in the late Victorian era, for whom job satisfaction was off the scale, as he wallowed in the morbid pleasure of the ultra-brief working relationships he forged with his clients and a sadistic smugness at his prolific turnover. His infamy recognized by a waxwork on display at Madame Tussaud's chamber of horrors in his dishonour.

Any expectations of a murder mystery, whodunnit, or a final 'Cor, I never thought it were 'im!' are quickly dispelled and if you think for a moment that amorous, affable bus conductor, Derek Farr isn't quite the ticket, he immediately proves to be a fare minded all-round good guy.

No! 'Wanted for Murder' is a largely grim parable, offset by a couple of surprisingly comic moments, portraying Portman's inherent insanity and morbid passion for killing, targeting young women in London parks after dark, rendering them post dusk no-go areas in the process. Further, he taunts detective Roland Culver with postcards, not of the 'Weather beautiful, wish you were here' variety, but with chilling predictions of where he intends to strike next. Yet, between the lines lurks a cryptic cry for help and a veiled self-loathing.

'Wanted for Murder' plays out as a sombre depiction of a man imprisoned within himself, enduring a meltdown into murderous madness, and the brittle breakability of the 78 R. P. M. Record: Several smashed accidentally by a gramophone shop manageress and one deliberately in a fit of rage, by Portman. Was it on RCA, Victor?

This is like a Dostyevsky thriller, you know the murderer from the start, and you have the privilege of together with the script writer gradually intersecting him piece by piece, to get into the very heart of the matter of his complex psychology. Like Raskolnikov, he almost begs to get found out and be delivered, Eric Portman makes a fantastic performance by never sparing the poor murderer his tribulations, who can't help being what he is, he can't explain it and understand it either, and he even prays to God to be set free. The explanations of the malaise "being in the blood" is poor and does not hold. And then there are all the other persons getting involved, his poor mother above all, who never suspects her son to be as affected as his father until it is too late, and his girls, all innocents and suspecting nothing, and then the marvellous police officers, the meticulously methodical Roland Culver deliberately beating about the bush until he at last has evidence, and Stanley Holloway as his second, dutiful to the last. There are others also and precious details, the case about the cigar, the spectacular scenes at the fair and Hyde Park, and the towering thriller of the final settlement, almost reminding of "The Third Man" although being out in the open and in broad daylight. You feel the keen pen of Emeric Pressburger here in almost every detail, the famous partner of Michael Powell, who was the script writer of them and one of the best in film history. To all this comes the haunting melody of Mischa Spoliansky, a Russian composer who had to escape from Russia to Germany to later make his career in England with various film scores, but this could be his very best: actually reminding of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's "Capriccio Diabolico" from 1935, expertly performed by Andrès Segovia among others. In brief, this very noir British thriller contains everything you could wish for, while the almost Dostoyeskian psychology is its major treat.

Wanted for Murder is directed by Lawrence Huntington and adapted to screenplay by Emeric Pressburger, Rodney Ackland, Barbara Everest and Maurice Cowan from the play by Terence De Marney and Percy Robinson. It stars Eric Portman, Dulcie Gray, Derek Farr, Roland Culver and Stanley Holloway. Music is by Mischa Spoliansky and cinematography by Mutz Greenbaum.

Nifty little thriller noir this, basically it finds Portman as the sinister Victor James Colebrook, a man with murderous instincts born out by bad seed lineage in his family tree. Can intrepid Chief Inspector Conway (Culver) nail his man before he kills yet again? Imperative since Victor has latched onto Anne Fielding (Gray), and although he is in love with her, he doesn't know how long he can contain his blood lust.

Thought to be influenced by a real life serial killer, Huntington's movie is very Hitchcockian in tone. Story unfolds by night in a London of dimly lighted foggy streets and dense shadowed parks, and by day it's the hustle and bustle of the city that provides a backdrop of false normalcy. As the tormented Victor goes about his way, leading his double life as a cunning member of society who dotes on his mother – and that of a strangler of women – the makers ensure the surroundings suit the persona.

A chapter of the story set at a carnival pulses with unease, a visit to a wax museum really gets to the heart of the evil, a murder sequence that is off camera strikes all the right terrifying notes, and a quite brilliant passage that sees witnesses come face to face with the killer in Conway's office is superbly performed by all involved. Then there is the finale that plays out at night (naturally) at the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park. Wonderful!

Portman (A Canterbury Tale/Dear Murderer) was a British treasure, an actor whose career begs for reappraisal by classic film fans. Here he is right on the money as the complex sociopath who detests what he has become and even dangles clues for the police to follow. Yet he also slips easily into society with a measured calmness that is rather chilling. Portman quite simply is excellent. As are Culver and Holloway as the sort of coppers Britain could do with having more of these days!

With Pressburger as part of the writing team it's no surprise to find the script tight and the dialogue snappy, Huntington (The Upturned Glass) and Greenbaum (Night and the City) never miss the chance to accentuate the psychological tremors by way of smart visuals, and Spoliansky's music is devilishly spectral like. It probably could have been shorn of ten minutes and the Dulcie Gray/Derek Farr romance gets a little twee at times, but this is well worth checking out and deserves to be better known. 8/10

This is an odd little film of immediately post War Britain that grew on me the second time I watched it. The first time I was somewhat confused plus I simply couldn't understand the actors and their thick British accents when they spoke rapidly. The second time though, it grew on me. In spite of the fact that the viewer knows everything and it is the police who are trying to find out who the murderer is.

A woman is killed near a local fair, strangled, and apparently there have been several of these types of murders - all unsolved - over the last year or so. Scotland Yard is called in on the case. They beat a path to the actual murderer's door almost immediately, but they don't know that and the murderer is playing it cool. So much so that it is awhile into the film before the viewer knows that this guy is the murderer and not just some moody eccentric fellow with an exaggerated penchant for punctuality and that this is not going to be some kind of "wrong man" story. And it can't hurt that the murderer is from a respectable household and is a respectable businessman as far as giving the police pause.

So in this film the accent is on the inner turmoil of the murderer, apparently tormented by the knowledge that his grandfather was a hangman. This is the kind of weird slant on things that I saw in the silent film "Hangman's House" - insinuating that people who hang murderers who were convicted by somebody else and sentenced by somebody else are the actual murderers. Plus back in this time people still believed that genetics were destiny rather than possibility. As the murderer's inner conflict intensifies, the rather haunting score of the film becomes louder and more constant.

The second time watching it, I noticed that this film was most economically shot. You never even see the first victim of the film, and subsequent scenes are shot outside or in small rooms. No elaborate sets seem to have been built. This tends to make post war British films high quality in the acting and plot departments since apparently there was not lots of money for art design.

I'd recommend this one. Just don't get the idea that it is a police procedural or a noir because it really is neither of those.

This is not a whodunit for one knows the identity of the killer ;it's more psychological drama,and some of its aspects somewhat predate works like Hitchcock 's "strangers on a train "(1951): the mother is omnipresent in the miserable murderer 's life,and in his house ,he only sees women such as his auntie and the servant ;although she notices he's always gone at night , the mother seems to want to ignore what might lay beneath : she knows the family has a history of family of mental illness,but she tries to reassure herself by saying he takes after her and soon he'll find the right girl and settle down .But isn't it already too late? The scene in the museum means a lot: he does need someone to lean on , but by introducing the right girl from the first sequence , the screenwriter (Powell's collaborator, Pressburger) creates a blind alley at the same time : the nice bus conductor.

Other similarities with Hitchcock's 1951 thriller:the fascination for amusement parks ,the final sequence in the island (which appears earlier in "stranger on a train" ). Both murderer are well respected men .

With his aristocratic look,his refined manners , Eric Portman gives a restrained performance but behind the mask,he conceals an intense suffering ; he may show infinite tenderness when he holds the girl in his arms ,and the murder is almost unexpected (directing avoids horror and treats the sequence in a stunning way)