House of Blackmail

William Sylvester used to pop up in some many British productions I always thought he was a British actor. This was until I saw him in the US movie, The Lawyer which spun off the television series Petrocelli.

Sylvester plays mysterious hitchhiker Jimmy who comes across fashion photographer Carol Blane. She is on her way to a house to talk to Markham who is blackmailing her brother for a bounced cheque. He demands £5000.

At a cafe, Carol who comes across a report of an escaped convict that matches Jimmy's description persuades him to accompany her for £50. Carol asks Jimmy to play the part of a lawyer.

They both engage with Markham and his associates. The house has a butler who likes to listen in through the keyhole. Later that night Markham is found dead. Both Jimmy and Carol are suspects.

This is an unpretentious murder mystery B movie and a rather effective one as well. There is comedy, mystery and plenty of suspects. Sylvester does well in keeping his motives mysterious.

I think the blackmail angle would had worked better, if Carol's brother was being blackmailed for being gay rather than a bounced cheque.

A foolish young man named Billy Blane has forged a cheque for £200 and is threatened with arrest unless he pays £5,000 to the urbane and wealthy Markham. His artist sister, Carol (Mary Germaine) tries to get him out of it by agreeing to meet Markham in his old country house. On the way, she picks up a good-looking and garrulous hitch-hiker (William Sylvester) who calls himself Jimmy. The radio, meanwhile, speaks of an escaped convict from a nearby prison. Jimmy agrees to accompany Carol to the house and pose as her lawyer in an attempt to unnerve Markham.

There, they meet Markham (Alexander Gauge) and his two associates, an elderly Eastern European doctor (Hugo Schuster) and a sharp-tongued American (John Arnatt), also a Polish maid (Ingeborg von Kusserow) and a seedy, spying butler (Denis Shaw). After some sparring from Jimmy, Carol agrees to pay the money, but is unable to withdraw it from her bank until morning. The pair must remain until then and, with the windows electronically secured, there is no way to escape. During the night, Markham is murdered, and the killer could only have been someone staying at the house...

There is much intrigue and some witty dialogue to be enjoyed in this early fifties B-film, which reveals its small budget with its studio-bound setting and recycled score (at one point, it sounded like something from a Norman Wisdom film!). American William Sylvester is ebullient as Jimmy and, with his mid-Atlantic accent, could well have made an excellent Saint. As usual, Alexander Gauge is wonderfully erudite as the disreputable Markham, another of his reasonable-criminal roles, while the British actor John Arnatt displays a convincing American accent as the man who takes charge. There is also some decent characterisation - for example, with Bassett the butler and his listening at keyholes and room of pin-ups - and much creepy sneaking about, which I always love. Despite the gothic aesthetics, however, this is emphatically a mystery, not a thriller, and a pretty straightforward one at that. It's about the characters' interaction - not wanting to be alone or with any of the others either - and also keeps us guessing as to whether Jimmy is the escaped prisoner or not. The ending is neat, simple and reasonably satisfying, while everything before it is enjoyable too. An average film, of course, but that should be no insult when such things are as fun as this.

(1953) House of Blackmail CRIME THRILLER/ MYSTERY

It has a blackmailer, Markham (Alexander Gauge) demanding five thousand pounds from Billy Blane (Barry Wynne) by Saturday. And he manages to convince him to get it from his sister, Carol Blane (Mary Germaine) since he does not have that kind of money. During the meeting with his sister, and as it turns out Billy forged his mother's signature to purchase something and was caught. She agrees to pay 5,000 with conditions that she would get to meet the blackmailer himself. And as she is driving down the highway, she then cross paths with a drifter who claimed to be homeless, he says his name is Jimmy (William Sylvester). Meanwhile, on the next stop Jimmy also appears to fit the description of an escape fugitive, James Corbett. And for some reason, Carol who picked him up from the highway, trusts him enough to ask him to pretend to act like her husband and lawyer, for the intention of grabbing the fraudulent check her brother forged the mother's signature on. And upon their arrival, it was their they meet the owner of the house, Pete Carter (John Arnatt); the blackmailer, Markham; the doctor, Welich (Hugo Schuster); the servant, Basset (Denis Shaw) and maid, Emma (Ingeborg Wells). As soon as Marham is found dead some time during the night and the phone wire has been cut, the owner then ordered all the current guests to stay at the residence until authorities showed up.

For a short running time of less than a hour and a half there is many twists and turns and surprising unexpected revelations that cannot be predicted for not everything is what it appears to be.

Despite the menacing title, William Sylvester's first stint as a virile & good-humoured 'B' picture leading man (actually billed second to squirrel-faced Mary Germaine) in this droll A. C. T. Quickie shot at Nettlefold is generally a pretty light-hearted affair, with an annoyingly jaunty score noisily emphasising the fact.

Although set in the usual enormous house, Maurice Elvey's uninspired grouping of his cast as they chatter away (including Denis Shaw as a gentleman's gentleman who makes Parker look like Ronald Colman), the film seems long and cramped, although cameraman Phil Grindrod as usual delivers in the dramatic scenes after dark.

HOUSE OF BLACKMAIL is an updating of the 'old dark house' style of murder mystery with added romance, blackmail, and escaped convict antics. The storyline involves a friendly but ruthless blackmailer (played by Alexander Gauge, well known to audiences for his role as Friar Tuck in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD TV series) who has a foolish young man in his grips. The young man enlists the help of his sister to visit the blackmailer and help pay the debt. She picks up a mysterious hitchhiker en route and arrives at the blackmailer's home to find an assortment of characters present, each with their own hidden motivations.

The blackmailer is killed in the middle of the night and the inhabitants of the household cut off until the morning. One of them is the murderer, but which? HOUSE OF BLACKMAIL will reveal all, but not before a running time full of creeping about in corridors, false accusations, the burning of important documents in a grate, and a lot of hold-ups with guns have taken place.

This is a pretty entertaining little movie that offers up nothing we haven't seen before, yet it somehow works thanks to a fast pace and a focus on the mystery aspects of the story. There's no time for slow-moving romances and the like here, just a script that keeps you guessing. William Sylvester does well as the protagonist mixed up in the proceedings who may or may not hide his own murky motivations, and Mary Germaine is a pleasingly modern heroine. Denis Shaw's butler stands out, listening at keyholes and keeping racy pictures plastered to his bedroom walls. The ending is unsurprising but ties up this little mystery quite neatly.