Out of the Shadow

A reporter (Terence Longdon) probes the mysterious death of his brother, who fell out of the window of his college dorm room. Without anything to go on, except his own curiosity, Longdon begins asking questions. When the police and the college staff are evasive in their answers, he digs in his heels and starts his own probe. Longdon turns to his brother's classmates and friends. He schedules a meeting with a student who saw someone walking on the roof of his brother's apartment on the night he fell. But minutes before the meeting time, the student is found dead, another victim of an accident. Now even the police are willing to believe that there is more here than just two accidental deaths.

The print I saw had the title, Murder On The Campus, and ran the full 61 minutes. Finally, the 3.5 viewer rating is ridiculous. This is a well made British B mystery. Nothing terrific but hardly 3.5. Another curious example of how IMDb handles ratings. Don't pass this up because of the rating.

Terence Longden shows up in Cambridge. His brother, a University student, is said to have committed suicide in the river. It's a conclusion the police accept, but Longden finds incomprehensible. Longden makes himself a nuisance, and soon encounters Diane Clare, the stepdaughter of a Cambridge don and antiques dealer who also seems to have dived into the river at the same time. It seems an unlikely coincidence to either. When another local antiques dealer comes to warn Miss Clare that Longden could be embarrassing to her and to the memory of her stepfather, their suspicions are confirmed... but if it was murder, what were they murdered for?

This early directorial effort by Michael Winner moves along at a terrific clip, with everyone talking very fast, annoyingly so. It's clear Winner was pushing everyone to make it come in at less than an hour, and he succeeded.... but it does no favor to the film.

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.

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.