Witness in the Dark

Enid Lorimer is a sweet little old lady who lives on the topmost floor of the rooming house. Her equally sweet neighbor is Patricia Dainton, a blind PBX operator who thinks she should stop talking about the 2000-pound brooch she has. Too late! The old lady is murdered, and the only witness is Miss Dainton. The papers make a fuss, so the murderer knows who he has to kill.... the woman who has the brooch now.

There are movie that are made cheaply and no one cares. There are movies where there are big, gaping holes in the plot or the lines, or someone who can't act for beans. So when a modest programmer like this comes together under the direction of Wolf Rilla, the result is something that well above average.

Fans of DOCTOR WHO or EMMERDALE will want to see this for an early glimpse of Frazer Hines.

A bleak, atmospherically photographed 'B' thriller with a situation similar to 'Wait Until Dark' that crams a lot into barely an hour and a spooky score by Philip Green that anticipates Michael Small's for 'Klute'.

Patricia Dainton and Conrad Philips are attractive leads as the damsel in distress and the detective who looks after her, while Nigel Green shows the promise he would soon amply fulfil as the ruthless but rather stupid villain.

WITNESS IN THE DARK is a brisk and efficiently-staged 'blind person in peril' type thriller boasting a fine leading performance from the rather lovely Patricia Dainton, who was to pack in her career shortly afterwards in favour of a sedate family life. I think cinema suffered from the loss because Dainton enlivened and lifted many a B-movie out of the doldrums by her presence and charisma alone, and WITNESS IN THE DARK is no exception.

Given that this is a cheap British B-movie with a short running time, the story is straightforward. A thief is driven to murder and the only witness to stand against him is a blind woman. I was delighted to find out that Nigel Green plays a crucial role in the film, cast against type and very good and tense with it. Conrad Phillips is the likable detective on the case. The direction is provided by the hardworking Wolf Rilla, a year before he made the classic VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. Thrills, twists, humour, and cold-blooded murder; it's all here, and I like to think that Hitchcock himself would have been proud of it.

This is a terrifically tense, consistently engaging 50s thriller about a kind, fiercely independent blind telephone exchange operator that unexpectedly finds herself the sole witness to an especially callous murder committed in her very own building! A taut, energetically performed, excitingly plotted cat-and-mouse' thriller, rigorously told, featuring a truly wonderfully spirited performance by Patricia Dainton as the uncommonly plucky blind heroine, and the estimable character actor Nigel Green is on splendidly sinister form as the spectacularly cruel, gimlet-eyed thief who monstrously means to do away with our uncommonly courageous heroine!

'Witness in The Dark' remains an exciting, rewardingly smart, competently made vintage spine-tingler that demonstratively has much to recommend it to avid murder mystery fans; perhaps, being especially worthy to those cineastes with an active interest in lesser known examples of British made, post-war crime-thrillers. Talented Director Wolf Rilla equips himself rather well here, maximizing the creepy, unsettling potential of screenwriters Leigh Vance / John Lemont's quality text, constructing some teeth-rattlingly tense confrontations, and Rilla elicits some exceptionally fine performances from acting maestros Green, Dainton and Madge Ryan. And I feel it would be somewhat remiss of me if I failed to draw attention to the fact that future 'Man About The House' hunk Richard O'Sullivan delivers a personable performance as the fresh-faced lad Don Theobold.

Most stories relay on relatable, often primal instincts to engage an audience. In thrillers, fear is the one most filmmakers try to evoke, and it can never be more acute than those times in which we are least in control. We feel especially vulnerable when we are incapacitated in some way and the most dramatic method of conveying this is injuring the protagonist. This usually happens towards the end of the third act, during the final confrontation when it seems as though the hero is about to perish. Sometimes, however, the injury is built into the story from the start in order to bring maximum intensity. The most famous example of this is Hitchcock's Rear Window, in which James Stewart's photojournalist breaks his leg and is forced to remain in his Greenwich Village apartment with nothing to do but stare out of the window and suspect people of murdering their wives. In Witness in the Dark, the injury is blindness. This had already been explored in 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956) and would be again in Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn and See No Evil with Mia Farrow.

Jane Pringle (Patricia Dainton) was blinded five years ago in a car accident in France which also killed her fiancé. She now continues to work as a switchboard operator and even teaches a young boy how to read Braille. However, one night, alone in her flat, she hears a disturbance downstairs. She investigates, moving into the hall, and encounters a thief (Nigel Green) on the staircase. Fortunately for the thief, Jane is unable to see him and will not, therefore, be able to identify him later. The thief does not attack her and instead escapes. Inspector Coates (Conrad Phillips) investigates and discovers that the thief had also murdered Mrs Temple, the old lady whose flat had been burgled. Jane, realising that she came so near to the culprit, believes she can help. Things get charged, however, when the thief decides he must return and tie up one or two loose ends...

A brisk, involving thriller, Witness in the Dark succeeds in what all such films must do and makes the audience feel affection for the character in danger. Jane is a pragmatic, brave, independent and compassionate woman who clearly has not let the tragedy in her life define it, and Dainton convincingly portrays someone without sight, sans glasses. Nigel Green, unsurprisingly, makes for a dauntingly sinister villain and, in the final scenes, maintains dignity and tension in what might otherwise have seemed vaguely farcical. Conrad Phillips gives his usual best, here appearing after thirty-nine episodes of ITV's The Adventures of William Tell. I'm always interested - though not morbidly so - in how long such actors ended up living and Phillips only recently left us at the age of 90, after publishing his autobiography Aiming True online.

There is also some amiable comedy involving Jane's neighbours Mr and Mrs Finch, in which the former is hoping to retain the stolen pocket watch he has recently bought down the pub and not relinquish it to the investigating officer. Elsewhere, eagle-eyed viewers will spot Man About the House and Robin's Nest star Richard O'Sullivan, only fifteen as the young blind boy Jane coaches, while there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role from future Doctor Who and Emmerdale Farm star Frazier Hines as a newspaper boy.