Smokescreen

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 modest, but quietly effective story of an insurance assessor (the ever reliable Peter Vaughn) investigating a possibly suspicious claim following the plunging of a car over a Brighton clifftop. Vaughn is first class as the dogged, brolly-carrying Roper, on screen virtually throughout, as he questions everything and trusts no-one. It has the feel of a police procedural, and there is some wry humour derived from his reluctance to spend money, and to fiddle his expenses at every opportunity, for the best of reasons, we discover. A stalwart supporting cast keep things real, and there are nice location shots. Worth an hour of anyone's time.

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.

Peter Vaughan, a wonderful actor, is the rather slimy insurance investigator investigating a claim in coastal Sussex.

And this unlikely hero succeeds where the Police have failed!

Made on a tiny budget, this film proves that enormous budgets are not always necessary to make good cinema.

Truly a minimalist marvel.