Mantrap

British Hammer mystery starring Paul Henreid, Lous Maxwell, Kieron Moore, and Kay Kendall.

A prisoner named Speight (Moore), found guilty of murder, escapes and heads for London. His wife (Maxwell, Miss Moneypenny of the James Bond films), who has changed her name and is involved with another man, fears he is looking for her.

A friend of Speight's asks a lawyer, Bishop (Henreid) to help find him. He does - Speight claims he's innocent and is looking for the real killer. He knows what the man looks like and is determined to clear his name.

Okay movie - several have commented on how cheerful Henreid is in this film. I guess thinking over his past performances, it is a different kind of role. His fiancé is portrayed by the lovely Kay Kendall, who died a few years later from leukemia.

I can't say this film held my interest except for the people in it. For instance, this was Barbara Shelley's first film.

The small part of Rex was played by handsome Anthony Forwood. He was married to Glynis Johns with whom he had a son, and later became Dirk Bogarde's life partner and manager. He died an agonizing death, so traumatic for Bogarde that he became an outspoken supporter of assisted suicide.

This has happened frequently in the movies, and it always happens again. The chief attraction here though is the ladies. Lois Maxwell is perfect as the professional woman who is scared to death of the return of her former husband, who has escaped from prison, after having been sentenced for a number of years for a stipulated murder, of which he has no memory, since the shock of it brought him amnesia. The other lady is Kay Kendall in an early role as the becoming wife of Paul Henreid, who is a lawyer who is asked to assist the fugitive, an artist, by a colleague of his, another artist, who believes he is innocent, and they both find it plausible that he has escaped from prison only to search out the real murderer. All they have as a lead is a few sketches by the fugitive, who never forgot the face of the murderer and made quite a number of sketches of his face. It is a small but highly efficient thriller, as the suspense keeps towering up throughout the film, culminating in a party towrds the end with everyone there, also both Lois Maxwell and Kay Kendall. Paul Henreid makes a good gentlemanly performance as always, but the chief attraction is the two ladies. Lois Maxwell was quite an actress, and Kay Kendall, soon the wife of Rex Harrison, would crown her career as the greatest comedienne British cinema has ever seen.

I only rated this 1953 film 5/10 as average.It has rather poor continuity, editing and to be frank is rather dull for what purports to be a thriller.The highlight for me was to see an early Kay Kendall performance however I did not recognise "Miss Moneypenny" (Lois Maxwell from early James Bond films) who played the female lead.The other user review above succinctly outlines the basic plot, such as it was, so I won't repeat it.Casting Paul Henreid in the male lead role as an investigative lawyer was a mistake as the producer should have cast a British actor for more verisimilitude in the role.Normally I like what I call "Cholomdley-Warner" (apologies to Harry Enfield) films but this was not one of them.

Paul Henreid stars in this Hammer B mystery as a private detective, Hugo Bishop. He is hired to find an escaped prisoner who had been convicted of a motiveless murder. They meet up at night at the scene of the murder with the silhouetted dome of St Paul's Cathedral as a backdrop. The rubble-strewn scenes of post-Blitz London are good. Lois Maxwell plays the escaped prisoner's frightened wife. She has found a new life surrounded by influential people. I reckon her best scene is when she awakens in panic in a beauty parlor. Bishop is determined to find the reason the escapee has returned to the scene of the murder. I think this would have made a good series with Henreid as the private detective. He plays it right. The character reminds me of The Falcon of the 1940s mystery series.

The next film watched for the "House of Hammer" podcast is 1953's "Mantrap", alternately titled both "Woman In Hiding" and "Man In Hiding" depending on where and when you come across it.

Thelma (Lois Maxwell) is disturbed to learn that her husband, Speight (Kieron Moore) has escaped from Prison, where he was sentenced for murder. In the subsequent years, Thelma had established a new life for herself and has remarried to Victor Tasman (Bill Travers). There are serious questions though about whether Speight committed the murder and one of his friends asks Hugo Bishop (Paul Henreid) to find him before the police do.

A reasonably solid if somewhat unspectacular whodunnit. It's apparent pretty early that that despite her fear, Speight is not actually hunting his ex-wife and so that only really leaves one other option. Performances are OK. Paul Henreid is not perhaps a typical leading man, but his spark with his secretary/fiancé, played by Kay Kendall, is quite good. Hammer regular Anthony Forwood reappears as yet another upper-class cad, but again, he's got that role down.

Visually and aurally, the film is OK, if not perhaps the height of what we've seen from Hammer (This may be linked though to me seeing a Youtube version that appears to have been recorded from the television. The story is fine, but, as is often the case with Hammer films, the ending is not such more stunted as abrupt. It's also a little bit to small for what it needs to be. In hinges on one character seeing another across a dancefloor, but the room doesn't seem big enough for them not to have noticed each other previously.

It was alright, perhaps a little more invention wouldn't have gone amiss, and I doubt I'm ever going to watch it again.