SOS Scotland Yard

Exciting, Constantly On-the-Move.

This Overlooked Early-50's British Cold-War Thriller Never Lulls.

Introducing a Multitude of Characters, Spys, Counter-Intelligence Officers, and Every-Day Folks Caught in the Middle.

It's a Multifaceted Sabotage Plot.

The Fast-Paced Film is Well Acted and Shot.

With a Plethora of Outdoor Scenes, Close-Knit Indoor Meetings of the Plotters and Counter-Plotters.

An Intelligent Script Accompanies the Mystery and Intrigue.

The Movie is a Sequel, Made by the Same Production Team that did..."Seven Days to Noon" (1950).

The Director's Production Team-Mate and Brother, John Bolton, Did one of the Best British Film-Noirs, "Brighton Rock" (1948).

This is a Crackling "Communist" Infiltration Movie.

Although, Communist, Reds, of Soviet-Union is Never Explicitly Stated.

Only its Philosophy and Politics.

Cold-War Movies from the Early 50's, a Heart-Beat Away Joe McCarthy and All, Doesn't Get Much Better.

The Conclusion in the Industrial Sector Doesn't Hold Back on Thrills and Spares No Expense in its Verisimilitude.

Breathtaking, and a Must-See.

The early 1950s saw a ton of anti-communism movies. In the US, such films tended to be sensationalistic and broad....but "High Treason" is different...and in good ways. Instead of being exciting and BIG, the film stresses realism...and it won me over as a result.

The film begins with a bombing. Someone or group of people has apparently been terrorizing Britain by blowing up various factories....but why? Well, it ends up being the work of a group of dedicated spies....and their plans for violence and terror have only just begun. Can the law catch up to them before it's too late?

It's interesting that no where in the film do they talk about communism nor the Soviet Union...never. Instead, they just focus on the investigative process and show, in a very realistic manner, how such an investigation might be conducted. As a result, the authorities are NOT geniuses with super-human abilities...just dedicated and crafty. This is THE reason I loved the film and recommend it to you.

A really splendid Cold War thriller full of good London location shots showing scenes in the capital that have sadly gone forever.There are no star names,just first rate character players some of whom no British films are complete without. Special mention should be made of the Irish actor Liam Redmond who wonderfully underplays his role as the Commander with his dry wit and quizzical smile.To me, this is possibly his best film. It seems such a great shame that this film is seldom (if ever) shown on Britsh TV. I came across it in a second hand shop issued as part of a British Classics video collection. It's a great pity that this superb picture is not more well known.

Roy Boulting deserves remembering as one of the best British directors of the 1950s and 1960s. With films like THE MAGIC BOX, SEVEN DAYS TO NOON, THE FAMILY WAY and other outstanding credits.

HIGH TREASON is certainly a good early Cold War flick, at a time when across the Atlantic US Senator McCarthy was launching his famous House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) which basically suspected everyone of communist leanings, and those suspicions were only heightened in Great Britain, as part of a continent - Europe - where World War Two had begun and had remained its prime theater, with Russia embarking on expansionism after the conflict, and spies like Kim Philby and others defecting to the USSR.

HIGH TREASON examines the way British police investigate a bombing incident resulting in human and instructural losses, and link it to a spy ring headed by a British traitor. It is certainly well done, even if I have some reservations about the authenticity of the final shootout.

Convincing acting, cinematography and realistic dialogue all help, even if HIGH TREASON rates nowhere near masterpiece. 7/10.

I agree with the writer of the previous comments. This is a little gem of a thriller, not because it has unusual plot twists, or even especially good acting, but because of its fantastic pacing (more like a modern thriller than the usual fare from 1951), and because of its fabulous shot-on-location scenes that put you right in post-war London. I grew up in post- war Britain, so perhaps I'm biased; but some of my favourite films are those which manage to escape the confines of the studio, something that was much rarer in those days than it is now. The world of the film is now more than half a century distant, and when you watch those streets, buses, and cars, those people walking around, it's slightly shocking to realize that many of them now sleep the big sleep, that you're looking through a window into the past. This alone, for me, is worth the price of admission.

The film is also the least talked about, most neglected of all Boulting's films, and as far as I can make out, hasn't ever been released on VHS, let alone on DVD, probably because, once the 1960s New Left had come into the ascendancy, especially in the various film studies institutes, the kind of old fashioned Cold War politics Boulting's film embodies were seen as both embarrassing and naive. Well, it's time for a re-evaluation. The politics of the film never did make much sense, so what we're left with is an exciting, well-crafted, and beautifully paced thriller, one that has, perhaps surprisingly, more heft than many contemporary thrillers, certainly more pizazz than the usual James Bond entries. If you can see it (and I discovered it courtesy of A&E, who ran it as a kind of joke several times in the early 1980s) sit back and enjoy it.