Blackout

I really enjoyed this film by the duo of Robert S Baker & Monty Berman.They cast the handsome devil Maxwell Reed (Chris Pelly), once married to Joan Collins, as a latter day James Bond type figure and an engineer, recovering from temporary blindness and quintessential English rose actress, Dinah Sheridan as a Miss Moneypenny type figure.This actress always seemed to be cast in intelligent roles.Surprisingly she had a Russian father & German mother.There were some Bond like quips such as Dinah (Pat Dale) saying to Reed, "You're a bit of a nosey Parker" and Reed responding, "Call me Parker" when the leads were establishing their credentials to each other at the beginning of the film.Dinah again demonstrated she can drive the same gull winged Triumph sports car as seen in the Tempean twin film "NO Trace" 1950, by the same production company.

Michel Brennan again played his usual "heavy" role.I again marvelled having seen "No Trace" at the blissfully traffic free roads and free parking around London.I noticed at one point Dinah was frustrated making a telephone call because another person had occupied the red GPO box first and unfortunately, mobile phones had not yet been invented in 1950!I thought "Chalky" the aero engineer was going to be a good guy until he gave the baddies a tell tale sign by a torch flash, noticed by Chris Pelly.A topical event was the electric blackout forcing householders to use candles or other illuminating devices until the electric company restored power.I remember my father doing this in the early 50s (I am 65) as Britain got on her feet and was starting to use more electric domestic power.This blackout, which gives the film its name, gave Chris Pelly an advantage using his other senses over chief baddie Eric Pohlmann.

Less worthy were the fake American accents used by some of the characters for no apparent reason. I presume the producers had been heavily influenced by seeing American gangster movies.There is a surprise character which appears towards the end which explains the whole plot, confirming my earlier suspicions.Enjoyable I voted 7/10.

It starts out very promising with a bland blind man walking towards a moving camera and thinking out his rather wooden thoughts but the viewer is quickly undeceived – it's another low budget film from Baker & Berman. This is proto-Saint, except it has robotic Maxwell Reed playing a cold hard-boiled engineer unable to mind his own business. Along with his fanatical sleuthing he also shared a high-rise coiffure with Roger Moore.

When blind he's a er witness to a murder, after his sight is restored he's eventually convinced he actually did stumble across a foul deed and goes on a convoluted chase after the baddies. And there turns out to be a lot of 'em too, the film gets littered with corpses of the murdered variety. Outside of Leslie Charteris and Peter Cheyney this is the kind of thing Americans always did best, seventy years later gunplay is still pretty rare in the UK…so far. Also they were always better at B films too, British B films merely looked like they were made by children. And Americans will always be better at American accents. At least Dinah Sheridan was in here as dependable as ever as the hero's backup, while there are so many other familiar faces at their day jobs too – crusty Kynaston Reeves, sweaty Eric Pohlmann, lumpy Michael Brennan, and Patric Doonan, Campbell Singer to name a few. As well as the vanished faces and morals a vanished Britain is also beautifully on display, with some occasionally nice photography. But is the film any good? Well no, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Could I recommend it to anyone? Well no, but hopefully I'll watch it again sometime just to make sure.

Maxwell Reed, the tall dark, handsome hero, with the Robert Mitchum one liners and 'droopy' eyelids, does a reasonable job of playing the amateur sleuth in his attempt to find the masterminds of a smuggling racket. Reed's portrayal is a direct take from Mitchum's world weary and cynical anti hero, Jeff Bailey, in the film 'Out of the past.' As in so much American film noir of this period, to raise the level of fear and tension, moments of danger are enhanced the use of the camera which presents the main characters in twilight and shadowy situations. Reed's accent is a sort of 'mid Atlantic' and after a while frankly grates on the ears as it's neither one thing or another. His 'Mitchum' sleepwalking demeanour and his cynical quips are shamelessly copied from American film noir, but they seem out of place in 1950's London. It's as if the director is trying to inject some sparkle and excitement into the action. However, on hindsight, it may have been more appropriate to have simply cast a genuine American actor for the part. The film starts promisingly enough with a temporary blind Reed being assaulted and knocked out in an London flat. Reed's encounter with Dinah Sheridan, the sister of the pilot killed in air crash two years earlier, prompts him to pursue his attackers and find out what they were really trying to achieve. But half way through the film, the storyline begins to meander and hence lose its 'punch' and ends up becomes tedious. Eric Pohlmann as usual is excellent, playing the foreign villain, with solid support from Michael Brennan cast as the chief 'henchman.' However, Sheridan is largely a spare part, who seems to spend most of her time getting in and out of cars. There's no sexual chemistry or 'frisson' between her and Reed, thus rendering the relationship as 'flat' and frankly dull. Maxwell Reed reminds me of an early Roger Moore, an average actor who seems to get by with snappy one liners and good looks! Nevertheless, the film is worth a look.

A blind man stumps by mistake into a murder and, as he doesn't know who, why or where, nobody believes him. The premise is interesting, but from there on the film spirals down and rapidly acquires a US made Republic Serial flavor, where the hero is again and again stupidly putting himself in trouble with the baddies but luckily --as the baddies aren't that clever either-- saving his neck every time. The hero breaks and enters and breaks and enters, and he is so lucky --did I mention he is lucky?-- that he not only survives but twice he easily finds decisive clues that the baddies --did I mention they weren't clever?-- left carelessly around for him to find. Everything but going to the police; obviously, that would be too absurd. We all know that amateur detectives are always much more competent than Scotland Yard's trained detectives. To help, all the time Reed is walking around with a marmoreal face that seems to scream: "look how handsome I am". Perhaps to compensate all his beauty, the female lead is quite plain and, in the final take, she looks downright ugly. I had much higher expectations, especially being this a British film. (Perhaps I was so predisposed because the most recent British film of that era I watched was "Obsession"... and that is entirely another matter.)

Thanks to some new channels on satellite we are now able to view again many British crime thrillers from the 40s and 50s which were last shown on BBC or ITV about 30 years ago.What is often most interesting about these films is the location shots,so that you can compare London of that era with the London of today.The film is full of actors familiar from that period,including one of my favourite actors of that time Eric Pohleman.He really was a superb villain.The fact that he had a continental accent meant that this made him sound even more sinister to the post war audiences.Also featured is Michael Brennan who must have beaten up more leading men than he had hot dinners.Kynaston Reeves who usually played Judges has a longer part than usual.In all a reasonably entertaining thriller