Cover Girl Killer

Harry H Corbett won acclaim as a stage actor early in his career but in 1962 he appeared on television for a 'one-off' Galton and Simpson Playhouse called 'The offer'. This was successful enough for Galton and Simpson to be asked to turn it into a series which they called Steptoe and Son. This was so popular that it ran for eight series ending in 1974.

Most people will only know Harry H Corbett for his portrayal of Harold Steptoe in Steptoe and Son. The quality of these performances, especially the little monologues and character sketches that were often included in the beginning of some of the later episodes, give an insight into the potential he had which was never realised.

Sadly, after 12 years as Harold Steptoe, Harry H Corbett was irredeemably typecast and found little serious dramatic work before his untimely death from a heart attack in 1982.

In Cover Girl Killer he is almost unrecognisable and his (believable) character could not be much further from his later typecasting.

This film is slightly clichéd but is worth seeing in its own right. However, I would advise anyone who has enjoyed Harry H Corbett in anything else to watch this if only to see what we missed of a potentially great dramatic career.

Despite only lasting an hour, this film about a serial killer who has a grudge against cover girls - a la The Lodger and Jack the Ripper - rarely flags and has an energy which lifts it above other B movies of the time. It also has Harry H Corbett, best known these days for Steptoe and Son, proving he could act in a serious role. He is genuinely creepy, chilling and calculating.

In some respects this film also reminds me of Peeping Tom, also about a psychopathic murderer of high intelligence who kills by ritual. While that film was a straight A, 'Cover Girl Killer' does not pale in its company, and it proves its worth as a late night regular on TV.

A wonderful gem of sleazy 1960s London with a brilliant performance from the wonderfully versatile Harry H Corbett in a very dark interesting turn as a Serial killer

A weirdo approaches the stage door of the Casbah Club, in 1950s Soho, and is transfixed by a portrait of Miss Gloria Starke (Bernadette Milnes, who pops up in the opening scene of Cover Story, a Sweeney episode, fifteen years later - if you're interested, like).

This is a film by Butchers Film Distributors (at least, I think it is – IMDb lists it as Jack Parsons Productions) and it's a film on a different level, theme wise, to almost every other second feature of its era. Cover Girl Killer is a film about a voyeur (in this most voyeuristic art form) who becomes a serial killer in order to "give man back his dignity, to free him from the prison of lustful images which foul his mind and pollute his sanity." The killer, played by Harry H Corbett, and billed only as The Man, feels imprisoned by society's values (which he finds morally abhorrent) and can only become "free" by killing girls who take off their clothes for Wow! Magazine. "I assure you, miss, your nudity means nothing to me", says Corbett, before dispatching one of them, Christina Gregg, who often popped up as the vulnerable type.

I've always had a problem with Corbett in a straight roll (Harry not Ronnie); his acting is just ludicrously mannered – really bad, oo I can act, look at me, amateur dramatics. Here, fortuitously, he's playing such an oddball that he's actually quite effective. Of course, the killer doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. "The borderline between what we call insanity and a hyper sensitive intellect is not always very clear, inspector", he tells Inspector Brunner (Victor Brooks), after turning up in his office, pretending to be Mr. Fairchild, property developer. Why he does this is not clear. Maybe, it's an ego thing and he wants to pit his wits against the police.

The most interesting scene is when the killer approaches Lennie Ross, (Theatre, Screen and TV agent, 3rd floor), for an actor to play the killer in the cover girl case. "Surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so called entertainment?" (This line later featured in a UK number 1 smash for Frankie Goes To Hollywood, pop pickers.) Here, Cover Girl Killer really gets to the heart of the matter; reflecting on itself as we watch plans for a film version of the film we are actually watching.

The British made suspense film, "Cover Girl Killer" (1959) follows the exploits of a mentally disturbed but un-named man (played with 100% sinister conviction by the wonderful Harry H Corbett) who is so strongly opposed to the use of sexually suggestive images on magazine covers, he takes it upon himself to murder any model he can find who is happy to exploit herself on a top shelf mag by posing as a photographer.

Young hopefuls are lured back to his seedy flat for portfolio photographs, never to leave the room alive.

To assist the police, the "WOW" magazine editor (Spencer Teakle) sets a plant by putting his girlfriend (gorgeous Felicity Young) on the next month's front cover in order to trap the serial killer.

Things go tits up however, and that's when the fun begins...

Well worth seeing for the very creepy performance of Harry H Corbett who started out as a serious Shakespearian stage actor and ultimately became immortalised in the long running British comedy series, "Steptoe and Son" (which was reworked in the States as "Sanford and Son") and the "Carry On" movie comedies.