Mr. Reeder in Room 13

I watched this on Talking Pictures. The quality itself was good for the age and indeed better than a lot of later B&W films. The story was interesting and kept me engaged.... as I mentioned in the title, this is a film of it's time and a viewer will, I am sure, enjoy it more by reminding themselves of that.... I think one detail that highlights that is the length of time that we are given, as viewers, to read the notes written by the characters, the reason I assume was that the makers wanted to ensure that what was written was understood and possibly with the lack of reading skills of the audience, who, at that time most had left school at 12 years old to work. So education was limited to the average person. If you enjoy old British movies from the 30's, 40's and 50's, I am sure you will enjoy the film overall... as I did..

Having been reminded via Talking Picture TV of the excellent "The Mind of Mr JG Reeder", they dug this one up for us to compare!

The actor who played Mr Reeder has little screen time so it looks like they used the name to sell the film.

Wooden acting! "... er ..." while the actor recalls his lines is understandable in early live TV, but never in film. Most of the participants are of this low standard.

Interesting only to see how bad British cinema used to be in the Thirties

Although emaciated veteran character actor Gibb McLaughlin is billed above the title in the title role as the late Edgar Wallace's "famous criminal investigator" J.G.Reeder in this slick, cynical little potboiler with germanic sets and lighting (and a very busy music score), he actually takes a back seat for much of the film as various other characters busy about engaged in a variety of illegal and mean-spirited activities before it all goes wildly over the top for the climax (again reminiscent of an old 'Dr Mabuse' adventure) while Reeder himself keeps watch in his own words "at a safe distance".

Mystery of Room 13 or Mr. Reeder in Room 13 is a 1938 British film starring Gibb McLaughlin, Peter Murray-Hill and Sally Gray. A young man (Murray-Hill) wants to work for "Special Services" and is given an assignment of going undercover in prison to discover who is printing counterfeit bank notes.

After that it gets weird. His girlfriend marries someone else, a crony of her father's. The main character, once he's released from prison, finds unexpected connections to the counterfeit ring and comes up against Gray's husband.

The marriage plot was ridiculous. Fuzzy sound, slow, not much to recommend it except I have always liked Sally Gray.

Edgar Wallace's J. G. Reeder makes his screen debut in this sluggish low key British B feature.

The government calls for civil servant Mr Reeder to do something about forged banknotes flooding the country.

Reeder calls in Captain Johnnie Gray who wants to serve his country and does so by going to Dartmoor prison in order to infiltrate the crooks who are doing the forging.

In doing so Gray breaks up with his Claire Kane. In jail he notices that an- bitter elderly robber Emmanuel Legge has been released from prison and is picked up by his son Jeff.

When Gray is also released from jail, he finds out that Claire is getting married to a Major Floyd. He turns out to be Jeff and it has all been planned by Legge to get revenge on Claire's father who was once also a crook.

Gray needs to rescue Claire from Jeff who is also a bigamist after marring her.

There is a lot of plot but also many contrivances and coincidences. This is a listless film and Reeder is a minor character in his own movie.