To the Public Danger

This is a little gem. It takes on a drinking journey. Quite a short film with a simple message about the ills of drink driving. The opening sequences see our friends arrive at a bar and spend a considerable time drinking, playing some bizarre game with something looking like a pool table with strange pot holes all over it and little mushroom shaped umbrellas. The car accidents and near misses are given full weight with clunky frame cuts and wonderfully fearful expressions in the reaction shots of the cast. Not to be taken too seriously, and definately worth a look.

This short film (only 43 mins) may possibly have been made as a public service exercise by Rank because it seems an unlikely piece of material to have been attempted as a commercial venture. But for what it is, a cautionary tale about the consequences of drunk driving, the lesson is acceptably presented in a surprisingly intense and well-directed little film which I even found to be quite suspenseful in places.

For such a short running time the characters are reasonably well fleshed out, and for the most part well played by the cast involved. Barry Letts in particular does a fine acting job throughout. Admittedly the part of Reggie is only a caricature at best, and although the roles played by Dermot Walsh (particularly in the last few minutes) and Susan Shaw verge on being overplayed this contributes to the intensity of the film as a whole. It is also good to see Patricia Hayes, an actress familiar to me through countless TV appearances back in the 60s and 70s, in one of her early screen roles.

For a British film of this time I also find this film to be quite fascinating in its depiction of class. The drunken yobbo here is not the working-class mug played by Barry Letts, who retains a degree of integrity throughout, but the upper class Captain (Dermot Walsh) who consistently makes it clear how little he thinks of his social inferiors. The sad part about this film for me is that I still recognise him, and the socially aspirant Susan Shaw character, however broadly drawn they are here, in people around me today.

Local good-time gal and stuffy boyfriend fall in with a couple of rich daredevils out for a good time. The predictably unhappy developments portray the evils of alcohol, fast cars, fast women and generally straying from good old family values. This movie is more like a paid advertisement for the League of Temperance and Decency and has about as much dramatic depth. A quaint reminder of post-war attempts to turn the clock back to Victorian values, pretending that the old social order had not been changed forever by the turmoil of the war experience.