Smokescreen

The biggest shame about Jim O'Connelly's quirky low-budget British post-noir SMOKESCREEN is that it was a film instead of a television series since Peter Vaughan's perpetually cautious and stingy insurance adjuster Roper had so many more adventures in him....

His particular case involves what the audience and a young couple witness from the very beginning: a burning car driving off a cliff, and we never see a driver, which is what Roper searches for throughout the hour-long programmer, going from one person to the next in the usual investigative fashion...

What makes SMOKESCREEN so fun and involving are not only the oddballs he comes across, but how Vaughan's own eccentric character reacts to each, especially an equally chintzy doctor and bribing railroad worker...

And then the supposed dead man's wife played by CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF ingenue Yvonne Romain, who Roper's handsome sidekick (John Carson) is smitten with... You'll be glad they keep having to return to her.

Vaughan would later play big, strong, intimidating monsters of men, like in Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS as the leader of a gang of low-rent Brits bullying Dustin Hoffman, and even an actual ogre in TIME BANDITS, which is why it's fun seeing him jauntily making his way through East Essex with an umbrella and the countenance of an awkward, uptight accountant who never threw a punch...

Which is an important Noir-gumshoe element since anything can derive from the woodwork, and a great cinematic investigator is usually the most vulnerable to unseen/unknown elements: only there aren't any deadly thugs lurking through darkened alleys... And yet the eclectic day-lit obstacles can be equally complicated, and just as intriguing, along with a grand sense of the traditional Whodunit.

Vaughan's Roper, much like Peter Falk as COLUMBO the following decade, has a way of coaxing information that only a cerebral manipulator can muster... and can you imagine if COLUMBO had only one movie instead of an entire series? Well in this case, we have to.

Very enjoyable "who dunit" not overly long at 70 minutes. It was of particular interest as it was filmed in the area where I live.

Although it is amusing how Roper fiddles expenses wherever he can while investigating insurance fraud, there is an ulterior motive. Anyone who has claimed expenses will laugh at this, or maybe shift uneasily in their seat.

Reference is made to the coastal railway link between Brighton and Eastbourne. No such line has ever existed. The station mentioned, Hellingly, could not possibly be seen from the vantage point shown on Seaford Head. Hellingly is north of Hailsham some 13 miles away. Hellingly Station does feature in the film (Derek Guyler as the Stationmaster) which is of historical interest as the station did close the following year as mentioned in the dialogue. The defunct station now sits on The Cuckoo Line, a local cycle and foot path linking Polegate and Eridge.

This film proves that you do not need a large budget to make an entertaining film. A good script and surrounding locations is all you need.

A blazing car crashes over a cliff. No body is found. It belonged to a co-owner of a business. Both owners had recently taken out large insurance policies. The insurance company is naturally suspicious and send an agent (Peter Vaughn) to investigate. The time frame of the accident adds to his suspicions. To complicate matters it turns out that there was an offer to buy the business that the missing man rejected but which his partner wanted to accept. To further complicate matters the local insurer (John Carson) who sold the policies loves the missing man's wife (the beautiful Yvonne Romain).

The film has a bit more depth than normal B-movie fare. Throughout there is a running theme about Vaughan's expenses. This seems to be for low comedic effect but later we learn why he is so tight with money. Similarly with the denouement we learn why the film's title is appropriate.

This is a pleasant, undemanding little B-movie for all the family. I give it a 7 because it's a well-made, well-written, well-acted low budget film lacking star names. Had it had an A-list budget I'd have given it a 6.

SMOKESCREEN is a rather endearing little British thriller with a strong comic flavour to allow it to stand out from the rest. Although it has the same low budget, ensemble cast feel as many other films from Butcher's Film Studios, it's the comic angle - which centres around the central character's miserliness - which makes it special.

The storyline is rather familiar, but the Brighton locations give it an edge. The dependable Peter Vaughan plays an insurance investigator who investigates the death of a man who died when his burning car went over the cliffs. To this end, he's teamed up with a youthful John Carson (PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES) as his assistant and must get to grips with the dead man's wife, played by the glamorous Yvonne Romain (CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF). Meanwhile, familiar faces from British movies like Gerald Flood and Sam Kydd regularly appear.

SMOKESCREEN comes across as a rather genteel whodunit, playing out like a simple murder mystery with a big 'reveal' at the climax. All aspects of the film are ordinary apart from the comic streak, which is very well handled and genuinely funny. It's this comedy that makes SMOKESCREEN worth watching.

A flaming car goes over the cliff near Brighton to land in the water hundreds of feet below. There's an insurance policy to be paid out, a bright new one just taken out, for a hundred thousand pounds, so his suspicious boss sends insurance investigator Peter Vaughan to poke around. There's no clear motive for what happened, since business was good and so was his marriage to beautiful, rich Yvonne Romaine, but it's clear that the driver faked his death to clear out.His boss, however, insists on a motive..... and that leads to some interesting insights.

Vaughan offers a delightful performance of a cartoonish-looking man in homburg and black umbrella, a skinflint as interested in cheating his insurance company out of shillings as of saving them from a false claim for a hundred thousand pounds..... even as they put him up at the most expensive hotel in Brighton while he investigates. He looks terrified trying to get information out of man-hungry Penny Morrell by getting her squiffed, and the question of who did what and why is brilliantly hidden under a trail of red herrings.

Vaughan is probably best known these days for his role on GAME OF THRONES. His role was probably written out when he fell ill and died in 2016 at the age of 93.