Time Is My Enemy

Copper and family friend Duncan Lamont drops in at the home of Patrick Barr and Renee Asherson, to comment on the crime novel publisher Barr has asked him to vet. He says that sympathetic murderers are a bad thing, and there's no excuse. Asked what he would do if someone he loved committed a murder, he decides he would resign.

Little does he know that he is about to be put in that position. Miss Asherson had been married before, to Dennis Price, but he was in a house that was bombed and declared dead. In reality he had used the opportunity to go AWOL and forge a new life as a criminal. Now a robbery he did resulted in a man in critical condition. His usual sources of money dry up and he goes to Miss Asherson and blackmails her with the specter of bigamy.

Actually, I think the courts would be on her side, but this second feature has a lot of moments that are quite telling. Dennis Price had played cold men before, but in this one he's absolutely nasty and sneering.... and capable of any bad act.

British actor Dennis Price made a living as smooth-talking lowlifes in British b-movies, and in 1954 he's a blackmailer for TIME IS MY ENEMY, crashing on his wealthy ex-wife who thought he died... while instigating cop Duncan Lamont, really the main character here, tries figuring things out...

This low-budget British programmer talks more than acts with dialogue over action, including an opening heist/murder that's only discussed through exposition... wasting characters like Price's two femme fatale lovers Barbara Graley and Susan Shaw, ultimately giving most of the work to initial ingenue-victim Renée Asherson, who even gets to wield a smoking gun to have some 11th hour crime-genre fun, which everybody on board here needed much more of.

This is very similar to Cage of Gold where a disappeared David Carter returns to blackmail his remarried wife Jean Simmons.Here we have Dennis Price a very effective and devious blackmailed come back from the dead to blackmail Renee Asherson.It is a very entertaining film notwithstanding it's very limited budget.However there is a bit of a hole in the plot.Firstly she would have received a death certificate for Price and secondly she would have been described on the marriage certificate to Barr as a widow.So Barr would have known that she had been married before.Price was on his way down when making this.So he had to make whatever was given to him.So we have a lot of performances to treasure.

A cheaply made thriller with a convoluted plot, and some clunky dialogue sequences (writing and directing), but enough of interest to keep you going - especially if you like British character actors, like Dandy Nichols, Alfie Bass, William Franklyn and Duncan Lamont. And, for me, a performance by Dennis Price is always worth watching. Although he's rather lacklustre in this supporting feature, he has some nice, sinister moments as an oily villain. His posture is assured and confident, his suits are well cut, he commands attention, and stands head and shoulders above the rest of the cast, which also boasts a nice performance from Susan Shaw (who was also, at that time, somewhat down on her luck, after a very promising start.) Director Don Chaffey clearly struggles with budget and time constraints and some dodgy sets, but there is a pivotal action sequence (I wont give it away) which is chillingly good - a sudden break from the style of the rest of the film, beautifully directed and edited. It's also interesting to see so much of London, 9 years after the end of WW2, still showing the ravages of the blitz. Nice print running on ABCTV in Australia.