Out of the Shadow

Bearing a 1962 copyright date but with a cast member (Edwin Styles, who plays the college principal) who died in December 1960, this otherwise very routine murder mystery (with the usual noisy jazz score) is enlivened by location work in Cambridge (where the locals in one scene can be seen gathering to enjoy watching the actors at work) and by the erratic direction of a young Michael Winner.

Winner has managed to assemble a cast of familiar faces to go through the motions and the frequent dollies & dissolves create a veneer of sophistication that goes some way towards camouflaging that Winner still hasn't yet mastered getting his eyelines to match during dialogue scenes.

Murder on The Campus is very much a B movie, it's not one I think many who saw it would have remembered for very long, as there is very little that's unique or exciting about it. That's said it's still an enhenjoyable watch, with a few twists and a few moments of intrigue. The acting is decent, solid enough, Longdon is solid in the lead role. I think of the fifties and sixties as a classic time for whodunnits, sadly this isn't one of the obscure gems.

Worth a look, but not one you'll remember for very long.

This is one of these films that could really have benefitted from a stronger, more charismatic, leading man! As it is, Michael Winner chose to saddle us with the wooden and rather plodding Terence Longdon to play "Kingston". He has arrived in the heart of academic Cambridge to establish just what happened to his brother who was found lying at the foot of his bedroom window. The police have assumed suicide, but he is not convinced. It doesn't take long for him to find himself embroiled in some skulduggery surrounding stolen goods and more bodies! Finally convincing the constabulary - "Insp. Wills" (Donald Gray) - that there is more afoot we embark on a briskly paced mystery as he and "Mary" (Diane Clare) who is the daughter of another seemingly suicidal victim begin to close in on the culprits - and attract their attention too! It's not great this - the acting is pedestrian and there is way too much verbiage, but the story is actually quite decent and the film does not hang about - each scene seamlessly picking up from the previous as if it were a stage play! It's nobody's finest work, but is still not a bad hour's watch.

A quickie quota B movie, at least you can gauge the evolution of Michael Winner as a film director.

Murder on the Campus is an early work that Winner wrote and directed. Mark Kingston (Terence Longdon) is a journalist who is investigating the death of his brother who was a student at Cambridge. The police think it was a suicide.

The police think Kingston is a nuisance who just gets in the way. However as soon as Kingston arrives on the scene, there are several other suspicious deaths.

There is something about the university accommodation that is of interest to someone.

This is a brisk and lively film, there are several suspects. You would probably gather that the most unlikely people are likely to be culprits.

It might not make much sense but Winner was a determined director. Within a few years after the release of this film he made it to Hollywood.

"Murder on the Campus" was Michael Winner's second film. It was actually made in England in 1957 under the title "The Clock Strikes Eight". It is a very routine muder mystery with little to recommend it. It is what was known as a "Quota Quickie", a second feature, made on the cheap to enable British theatre owners to fulfill their quota - a legal requirement that a set percentage of all footage shown in British movie theatres had to be British in origin.