Echo of Diana

Given the demand for spy films generated by the success of the James Bond films Butchers decided to have a go.However they did it with a tiny budget and a plot that would be enough for a film 2 hours long.I watched this twice and i have to confess that i still did not understand the twists and turns in the second half of the film,with a shoal of red herrings swimming around.There just seemed to me to be a large number of incidents that were unexplained.The film was competently acted and directed and the whole thing rattled along at a fair pace.However once you have partly lost the thread in this sort of film you are completely lost

A British agent called Philip Scott is killed in a plane crash near the Turkish border. His wife Joan (Betty McDowall) is concerned by a memoriam in the newspaper signed by a mysterious woman known simply as Diana but no trace can be found of her. She is helped by journalists Pamela Jennings (Clare Owen) and Bill Vernon (Vincent Ball) who is keen to do a series of articles on Scott claiming that he knew him during the war. The pair have both had their flats ransacked and are summoned by security chief Colonel Justin (Geoffrey Toone) who believes that both jobs were perpetrated by a double agent called Harris who is some how connected in the Philip Scott case. Later Joan is approached by the head of an Eastern embassy, Kavali (Peter Illing), who informs her that her husband is alive but has defected to the East. He says that if she wants to be reunited with her husband arrangements will be made to get her out of the country to which she agrees but is all as it seems?

A modest but better than you would expect spy drama from quota quickie specialists, Butcher's Film Distributors, who seem to be enjoying some resurgence of interest in their prolific output of low budget programmers as many of them including this one are finding their way on to DVD. Reginald Hearne's script is at times confusing but for once there is some suspense to be had as Betty McDowall's distraught wife seems to be going along with the enemy agents to join her husband who has allegedly defected. The story is kept moving at a good pace by director Ernest Morris whose career was almost exclusively in b-movies and he is helped a lot by Walter J Harvey's atmospheric black and white camera-work. The acting especially from McDowall and Vincent Ball is good all round.

Dermott Walsh has disappeared. His wife, Betty McDowall, believes his private plane has gone down, and him with it. Then the radio announces that authorities believe they have found the crashed plane near the Turkish border, and her friend, Clare Owen, points out a notice in the personal ads of a paper: "In Memoriam, Philip Scott (Walsh), killed in an air crash June 4; Fondest love. No regrets. Diana."

Miss McDowall is called into Scotland Yard, where Geoffrey Toone tells her there are spy matters going on. At that point, things become confused.

It's a nice little mystery wrapped in a spy thriller, with mysterious spy rings and no one to trust. It's a cheap little thriller, but the actors speak their lines as if they mean them and there's no clear answer to whodunnit until the big reveal at the end. Not bad at all.

'Echo of Diana' is one of those British B-Movies that does exactly what one expects... Entertains, with mystery and suspense.. Typically cast with those 50s-60s b list actors, that deliver to the best of their talent... Actress Betty Mcdowell, is a dead ringer for the actress Jane Griffiths... I completely get them mixed up, they're almost like twin sisters..... Dermot Walsh pops up towards the end...

I recommend this enjoyable mystery on a Sunday afternoon:).

Having seen this 60s black & white crime drama quite a few times now, I find It' still enjoyable to watch whenever aired on 'Talking Tv'. Nostalgia eat your heart out.! British 50s/60s B-movie-crime genre, I recommend you watch them, as they're always entertaining with a great, (mostly underrated) cast. Having a large collection of this genre recorded now, Sunday afternoons seem to be mostly spent catching up viewing them all...:) Nostalgia & loving memories again come to mind... family, and my own upbringing in the 60s seem very close to my Mothers generation growing up during the war and experiencing the 50s as portrayed in these classic 50s-60s Classic British fashionable movies.. A hearty Memorable nod to our past...!

Kind of surprised at the 5.5 rating. It's definitely not. It's a simple story but with some interesting twists and turns. The acting is very good and at no time did I disbelieve what was going on. At the time of writing (2023) the lead actor is still alive, about to turn 100 this December. The others have all long since passed. As a Canadian I get to see many British movies here in Austria by watching a British channel on my TV courtesy of my giant satellite dish capable of capturing faint signals from abroad. This film was above the average of the ones I've seen over the years and enjoyed the way it ended.