Emergency Call

You can't get much closer to reality than in describing and recounting the circumstances and very critical instances in the emergency of having a very short time to save a child's life with the rarest possible blood group, for which three donors are needed, and the difficulties in getting them in time are constantly towering here, even mounting to criminal complications and crooked business in the field of boxing. The realism is total, the film is aptly scripted with impressing accuracy from both the views of the hospital and Scotland Yard, and the human destinies involved are gripping, especially the last one, a compromised case of innocence. The acting is equally superb, no one is overacting, everyone is natural and neutral, and they are all on equal footing. There are many films like this from England around these years, and they are generally all reliable and impeccably realistic, like Italian neorealism, no matter how prominent actors are in them. This is better and more exciting than most thrillers, and yet it is all fictional, but the reality is too convincing not to raise a certainty with the viewer that it must all be taken more or less directly from reality.

Portmanteau story regarding plight of a critically ill child, stricken with Leukaemia. She has but days to live, she needs a blood transfusion for 3 pints of blood, but needs this within days or she will die. The race is on to find suitable donors - complicated by her extremely rare blood group.

The caring doctor teams up with a wily Scotland Yard detective, and they meet various sections of society in the hunt for their men.

Notable for an appearance by former World Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion - Freddie Mills.

A stock black and white "B-movie", with some interesting twists and turns before we reach the climax.

It's quite tough to be objective about this - it is a well made feel-good film with a worthy cause and sterling efforts from all concerned as they try to track down a blood donor who can save the life of a desperately ill child. Simultaneously, the police - Jack Warner and Bruce Seton - are on the trail of a dodgy boxing promoter who is trying to manipulate the career of "Tim Mahoney" (former World Light Heavyweight Champ Freddie Mills) and also of some other recalcitrant miscreants. It's got the smallest of budgets, but a surprisingly solid cast of British stalwarts from Dandy Nicholls and Anthony Steel - the well meaning doctor - to Sid James, Thora Hird and Eric Pohlmann and they all combine to make this a perfectly watchable tug at the heart strings mixed in with the usual detective yarn. If you come across it, then you ought to spare it 90 minutes - you'll feel better afterwards.

Competent if slightly stodgy (and now rather dated) British B-movie. The plot centres around a child critically ill in hospital who needs a blood transfusion to save her life. Unfortunately she has a rare blood group, so Scotland yard are called in to track down possible donors. This is used as a framework for a collection of little stories about life in London ca 1950 rather in the style of "The Blue Lamp". Jack Warner and Sid James as a boxing manager (who could be a decent character actor when he tried) do a reasonable job at keeping the plot afloat. Now mainly of interest as a social document.

EMERGENCY CALL is a film that takes an old premise, involving a sick and ailing child who desperately needs to be saved by a transfusion of rare blood, and uses it as a basis for a film which explores working class life in London in the early 1950s. It's an intriguing little portrait of its time, depicting a bygone era populated by racial tension, corrupt boxing promoters, and criminals desperately trying to cover up their past crimes. The film is episodic in nature and hampered by the constraints of a low budget, but not without interest for fans of the genre.

The cast includes Jack Warner (TV's DIXON OF DOCK GREEN) playing, you guessed, a policeman, and real-life boxing champ Freddie Mills playing, well, a boxer. There are also roles for those who would achieve later fame, including Thora Hird and Sid James. The film shrugs off the social commentary about two thirds of the way in, ending up as a police procedural thriller with an effective climax. Not great, but there's still plenty of interest here.