Serena

A low budget b-movie from Britain's poverty row specialists - Butcher's Films. Patrick Holt (a former leading man in British films of the 1940's), plays Inspector Gregory of Scotland Yard who investigates the murder of an artist's wife and the disappearance of his model which coincided with the murder. Serena is very good for the type of picture it is , without a doubt. While the story is your routine murder mystery, director Peter Maxwell directs at a good pace and the b/w photography of Stephen Dade is very newsreel like and invests the proceedings with a nice feel for 1960's London . George Provis's art direction is also noteworthy. For instance, in a nod to film noir, we only ever see Serena throughout Holt's investigation in a painting by the artist. This nice touch reminded me in a sort of way of Otto Preminger's classic film, Laura, and it adds to the mystery and intrigue of the story line. All in all its a cut above the usual quality one normally expects of these things. The cast features Honor Blackman who at that time was a star on television as Cathy Gale in The Avengers espionage series. This film used turn up late at night on ITV back in the 1990's along with other b-movies like this, which vary in quality from above average to absolutely abysmal. It has since enjoyed a DVD release paired with director Maxwell's other Butcher's second feature Impact.

An artist's wife is shot dead at her country cottage and Inspector Gregory (Patrick Holt) is called in to investigate. The artist, Howard Rogers (Emrys Jones), goes to identify the body, but it turns out not to be his wife. So who was she? His wife Anne (Honor Blackman) shows up at his flat and she reveals that her close friend, a struggling actress called Claire Matthews, had been lodging with her at the cottage. In addition, Anne reveals that she was being followed by a woman with long dark hair - a private inquiry agent looking for divorce evidence or somebody more sinister? - and, in order to lose her, she paid Claire to dress in her clothes and walk into town while she quietly slipped away. It looks as though the murderer shot her mistaking her for Anne. Gregory's chief suspect is Rogers' model, Serena Vaughn, who matches the description of Anne's stalker, but she has vanished. Miss Vaughn was in love with Rogers, but despite being separated from Anne for the past few years he was on the verge of making up with his wife. Did Serena kill Claire and when she realises that she shot the wrong woman will she make another attempt on Anne's life in a bid to get the man she loves? Or is Gregory dealing with an elaborate smokescreen designed to divert attention away from another murderer?

We open with a woman walking up the stairs, turning to find a person standing in the doorway and - boom! The police arrive at the rural cottage and we discover that she was the wealthy wife of struggling painter "Howard" (Emyr Jones). Was everything in their marriage happy? Well it falls to "Insp. Gregory" (Patrick Holt) to get to the bottom fo things - a task made more complicated when one of the artist's models goes missing and that's before we get quite a twist to throw the plates in the air and leave us with a rather jumbled and overly contrived mystery. The remainder of the hour seems designed to showcase the acting talents of Honor Blackman rather than deliver a plausible mystery and by the end I'd rather lost interest. It's a low budget affair which doesn't help, but Peter Maxwell's rather staccato and lacklustre direction makes heavy weather of this, sorry.

The film opens with a woman being shot dead. The victim is assumed to be Ann Rogers, the owner of the cottage in which the body is found, and the prime suspect is her estranged husband, an artist named Howard Rogers. Although Howard claims to have an alibi, he also has an obvious motive to want his wife dead. He has been having an affair with his model, Serena Vaughan, but Ann, a devout Catholic, has refused to grant him the divorce he would need to marry Serena.

And then the situation is turned upside down by a series of coups de cinema. Taken to identify the body, Howard claims it is not that of his wife, and Ann suddenly turns up alive and well, saying that she wants a reconciliation with her husband. Howard produces a witness who can support his alibi, and Ann tells the police that the murdered woman was Claire Matthews, a friend who was staying with her and was presumably killed by mistake for Ann herself. Suspicion now shifts to Serena Vaughan, who is missing. There is, however, to be one more devastating plot twist.

"Serena" was originally made in black-and-white as a B-movie, which explains its brevity, little more than an hour in length. Yet it is an intriguing, well-plotted murder mystery which keeps the audience guessing about who we can trust and which information we can take at face value. Although it was made as long ago as 1962, it still turns up regularly on British television, a testament to its durability. 7/10

A goof. The police officer investigating the crime holds the rank of Detective Chief Inspector, but after he shows his identity badge to a potential witness, the man addresses him as "Superintendent".

The late Honor Blackman (billed third), after starting out playing ingenues followed by several years in the doldrums, had by 1962 been reduced to working for Butchers. But she had by now adopted that swept-back mane that by the end of the year would be indelibly associated with Cathy Gale and the lioness she thereafter remained for the rest of her long life.

It may have been intentional that naming the film after the corpse at the centre of the action was a conscious nod to 'Laura'. But making the religion of the victim a central plot point remains an unusual touch.

A jacketed figure carrying a shotgun opens a door at 3PM and shoots a woman. Some time later, there's a knock at the door of painter Emrys Jones' flat. He the black-haired woman embracing him to leave. She goes out the back door. At the front door is Chief Inspector Patrick Holt. Jones' estranged wife has been shot and killed. He explains he spent the entire day shooting pigeons with his model, Serena Vaughn. She'll confirm this. However, the corpse turns out not to be Jones' wife, who turns up later in fine fettle as Honor Blackman. But there's a dead woman, and where the dickens is Serena?

It's a nifty little mystery that I didn't unravel until after they revealed it, and the telling clue, although obscure to me, is fair enough. There's also the pleasure of looking at Miss Blackman and the story is told quickly and efficiently. My only problem with it is the random nature of Johnny Gregory's score; surely there's nothing amusing about a carload of copper going off to look for clues.