Murder in Eden

One of several British 'B's to be filmed at Ireland's Ardmore studios around the turn of the Sixties, featuring an early leading film role for outstanding character actor Ray McAnally, with estimable contemporary Norman Rodway among the supporting cast. I had the art forger and murderer figured out pretty early on, but was still thrown by one twist toward the end, and it was worth watching. Can only echo the comment that it would have been better had the lovely Yvonne Buckingham been leading lady.

Art expert Robert Lepler tells gallery owner Mark Singleton that the old master he is about to deliver is a fine forgery. Someone switched it for the real one after Lepler authenticated it. He's working on a book on forgeries. He also tells Singleton that the latest painting he is touting is a forgery. Singleton pulls it, but Lepler dies in a hit-and-run, just as French journalist Catherine Feller shows up to interview him; she finds Inspector Ray McAnally crossing her path, as well as oil magnate and collector Jack Aranson, and restorer Michael Lucas.

It's a nice little script, fairly ambitious in its coverage of the hothouse world of art collection for a B movie, and always threatening to turn farcical when Miss Feller and McAnally cross paths. While director Max Vanel is good at covering the story and the visuals, the accents come and go, and a lot of the actors speak Received Pronunciation with what sounds to me like an Irish lilt. Some very smelly red herrings get dragged along the path, and it's a fair, although not too challenging mystery.

Murder in Eden is a quota quickie. A low budget B movie that has an early leading role for the great character actor Ray McAnally.

He plays Inspector Sharkey called into investigate the death of an art critic in a hit and run accident. The critic had earlier claimed that some paintings in an art exhibition were fake.

Sharkey finds himself paired up with a beautiful French journalist Geneviève Beaujean. It is not long before someone tries to run Sharkey over.

A brisk plot but it still feels padded. At least there is an interesting twist near the end but was Sharkey always one step ahead?

This might be the only time McAnally had a leading role in a movie. Then again the film was shot in Ireland but is supposedly set in London.

Directed by Frenchman Max Varnel son of famed comedy director Marcel Varnel,and featuring French actress Catherine Feller.This is a bottom of the bill thriller which provides few thrills and little action.

The corpses pile up without anyone being too upset in this light-hearted quickie shot in Ireland concerning the theft of a painting worth £55,000 (a lot of money in those days). For probably the first and last time Ray McAnally plays the dashing two-fisted hero, while continental cutie Catherine Feller drives about in a bubble car to accordion music supplied on the soundtrack by Wilfred Burns to make sure we know she's French.