Cloak Without Dagger

In places this resembles a sixties rather than a fifties spy movie, with it's sinister Chinese femme fatale and plot involving nuclear weapons, and boasts the promotion of the rather stern-looking Mary Mackenzie (who usually played unglamorous character parts and actually declares at one point that "I could never be described as lush!") to the sharp-witted, sharp-featured and sharp-suited heroine who does most of the sleuthing.

Felix (Philip Friend) and Kyra (Mary Mackenzie) were an item during the war. One night some years later they bump into each other.

Kyra is now a fashion reporter. Felix is a waiter but he might be into something more. On the trail of an exotic enemy agent which Kyra is all for. Only she finds a dead body in a hotel which then promptly disappears.

She enlists the help of hotel detective Fred (Leslie Dywer) who used to be a cop. He ends up being suspicious of Felix instead.

Cloak Without Dagger is a quota quickie. It is cheaply made with decent production values but a hackneyed and silly plot.

The best performances are from Dwyer and Mackenzie.

Feisty female reporter meets an old flame, but is he mixed up in the riddle of the body in the bathroom? And what is the hotel detective doing at the weapons testing facility? Rest assured, these and other intriguing questions are eventually answered.

The absence of hi-tech spy gizmos of the James Bond variety is made up for by plenty of opportunities for sofa-based detectives to test their skill in unraveling a good mystery.

CLOAK WITHOUT DAGGER is a cheapie put out by Balblair Productions, who released precisely three films during their short-lived career in the film business: this, THE BLACK RIDER, and STOCK CAR. All of them were written by prolific screenwriter A. R. Rawlinson and STOCK CAR is probably the best of the rather nondescript bunch, a gangster story set in and around a garage. CLOAK WITHOUT DAGGER is more undistinguished, a film in which the villains are spies working for their own purposes.

It starts off well with some top intrigue inside a nondescript hotel and goes downhill from there. Leslie Dwyer is a likable enough familiar face in the British B-film genre but he's miscast as a detective here. Mary Mackenzie is much better as the plucky heroine who literally stumbles over a corpse at one point. There are welcome roles for Allan Cuthbertson, Bill Nagy, and Frank Thornton, but the whole thing feels rather lifeless and drawn out, a far cry from the best of the spy thriller genre. Perhaps the budget just wasn't up to the job.

Mary Mackenzie is a fashion reporter who stumbles across a murder. This makes her think abut her old boyfriend, Phillip Friend, who was in British intelligence, and his work dealing with professional spies -- the ones who are in it purely for the money. as she searches for answers, she enlists the help of detective Leslie Dwyer.

What do you have when you have skilled, even excellent actors, and the people behind the screen -- the writers, the directors, he cinematographers -- do their bits in the cheapest, laziest way? Director Joseph Sterling doesn't even bother with decent editing; conversation is carried on in pretty much medium long take to avoid the time and expense of new set-ups. The performers offer some life, but the movie, as a whole, is dull and lifeless. Too many plot points are talked out instead of being shown.