Return of the Frog

Gordon Harker reprises his role of policeman Elk from 'The Frog' (1937) but here he has been promoted to Inspector. He leads the investigation against a criminal who radios in his instructions to his gang via a massive curio figure of a frog with beaming eyes. The gang are all known by numbers and they carry out raids and shootings and explosions in London. Chicago Dale claims to be an American policeman visiting Scotland Yard to learn about their detection methods. Elk tries to check with Chicago Police but their Chief has just been murdered so there is no corroboration of Dale's story.

Mum Oak's riverside bar is a great setting with it's stable door type entrance a few feet away from the lapping water of the River Thames. Inside is a cupboard safe and a back door that leads to a yard and a cellar convenient to carry out secret activities. Mum Oaks (Una O'Connor) is a fence who is well known to Inspector Elk and she is in with other dubious characters like Captain Dutchy and Dandy Lane. She treats her brother Golly in a harsh manner and all of the people at Mum Oaks' place come across as 1930s contemporary updates of Dickensian characters.

Inspector Elk is usually attired in a grubby raincoat and carries a brolly which he uses to rap on doors. He never knows whether he can trust Chicago Dale or not. He is under constant threat from such things as an exploding phone box and poison gas vapors disguised as London fog and a booby-trapped river police boat. Fortunately he carries a gas mask when he is trapped in Mum Oaks' cellar that is filling with poison gas. This is a good entertaining mystery filled with incidents.

There's a criminal mastermind running a desperate gang in London. He communicates with his henchmen via a porcelain frog with blinking eyes, and he punishes the disloyal and those who threaten him by blowing them up. Inspector Gordon Harker is on his trail.

It's a sequel to The Frog, and may strike you as similar to the trio of "Inspector Hornleigh" movies that Harker also starred in, albeit without Alastair Sim for comic relief. There's a simple reason for that relationship: they're all based on works by Edgar Wallace. If you're familiar with the Edgar Wallace series from the 1960s, you'll find this one a bit cozier, with fewer of the gothic elements from the German film makers later on. Director Maurice Elvey reuses sequences from his Sherlock Holmes movies from the 1920s, most obviously in a long sequence set on the Thames.

The copy I saw has a slightly compromised soundtrack that made a lot of the chitchat difficult to follow.

Edgar Walace used to be the same kind of franchise that Alistair McLean or Steven King would become.

Here we get the same succession of murderous ambushes, disguises, suspects and heedless detecting that his books offers (the fifties German films had little connection.) This team had the formula all down with the dockland atmosphere and so British players making it ring true.

Director Elvey was a sure craftsman at this stage and the pace is rapid enough to cover the illogical moments. Even the dreadful Gordon Harker is in his element.

Edgar Wallace,one of the co founders of British Lion,was a prolific crime writer.Many of them had a mysterious boss at the head of a gang of criminals.In this instance The Frog is resuscitated from the first him,as is Elk.Gordon Harker mages a very engaging detective assisted by Cyril Smith.So successful was his character that it was renamed Hornleigh for a radio series and 3 films with Alistair Sim. It is not hard to guess the identity of The Frog but this does not spoil the entertainment.

Although the Frog Gang was thought to be out of business a sudden rash of crimes shows the mark, literally, of their return. Before long Inspector Elk is once again on the trail of the gang, only this time he's aided by Dale Sandford from Chicago, who may very well be the one that calls himself the Frog.

I maybe over selling this movie by giving it a ten out of ten, but few of the mysteries of the time make me laugh, smile and sit on the edge of my seat the way this one does. This one has everything in abundance, chases, fights, smart ass lines, romance, and best of all genuine mystery, something most mysteries of the period are lacking. There is only one false note in the entire film and that is the performance of the Frog when he's revealed in the final moments.

No, its not the best movie ever made, there are "problems" with it that would keep it from being a "perfect" film, but I'm not looking for a perfect film. I, like most people I know, tend to watch the old mysteries for a feel that they engender, its not the mystery or acting but a place that they take you to and this one has it in spades. It feels like an old friend even when you're only just seeing it. Its a movie from a simpler time when the heroes were good, and the villains were bad and even though you know in the back of your head it will come out okay, you still sense that anything can and will happen. Its the old mystery you might have made had you had the chance to do so way back when.

Put this on my list of all time favorites, its destined to become a well worn DVD.