Mark of the Phoenix

Is this enjoyably unbelievable Cold War thriller for real? At least some of the humour seems intentional as the cast teams with broadly played sinister foreign caricatures (including foxy top-billed Julia Arnall) pursuing a metal that provides protection from radioactivity.

Wilfred Burns' score when not being parodically 'French' (actually Belgian) is as usual noisily intrusive. The producers actually sent sent a crew to Belgium and as photographed by veteran Geoffrey Faithfull it all looks good.

It's also nice to see Anton Diffring and Roger Delgado working for the law for a change.

Anton Diffring stars in this duff British supporting thriller concerning (guess what!) the smuggling of a cigarette case composed of a secret alloy. Really it's just "The Lavender Hill Mob" without the Eiffel towers or the comedic charm of Ealing. Its produced by "Butcher's Films", Britain's poverty row film production company who turned out many a mediocre b-feature at this time. This particular one was made in 1957, but shelved until 1959 until a suitable main feature was found to go with it. Don't let the rather nudging title fool you because it's not that exciting. These days the Butcher's films occasionally turn up on ITV in the wee small hours as a time filler.

I taped Mark Of the Phoenix when ITV screened it during the early hours some time ago. They often used to screen these British crime B movies, but don't seem to now for some reason.

In this one, a jewel thief gets hold of a cigarette case made from a new type of metal. Police are on his trail and it turns out that the metal this case is made from is atomic.

This is one of the slightly better crime dramas made during this period and the fact that the metal the case is made from being atomic is certainly not surprising as the Atomic Age was at its height.

I've only heard of one of the stars of this movie, Anton Diffring (Circus of Horrors).

Mark of the Phoenix is a good time filler one evening. Not too bad.

Rationg: 3 stars out of 5.

I rather lost the rather complicated plot on this one.Maybe it was the unusual sight of Anton Differing playing a good cop.however the first scene rather set my teeth on edge.A scientist is shot in the chest from about 10 feet,the killer places the gun in his hand,and for some strange reason the police assume that he committed suicide.This undermined the whole film for me.From then on the film had so many twists i reminded me of a coiled python.However at no time did it show any sign of life.Lots of location shooting but to no real effect.A really poor effort,and rather a waste of time.The title is rather misleading.

MARK OF THE PHOENIX is a stodgy little effort from the reliably poor Butcher's Film Service. This one tries for a Cold War vibe but ends up being poorly-plotted and rather uninteresting, with long stretches where nothing happens. The cast of rogues are hardly engaging and the storyline, about a new metal alloy which everybody's trying to get their hands on, is particularly dull.

The film features Anton Diffring and Roger Delgado as a couple of detectives on the hunt for a cigarette case, and there are various murders and fights between principal characters along the way. However, the direction is constantly pedestrian - Maclean Rogers did a lot better with some of the Paul Temple films earlier in his career - and the script from CARRY ON writer Norman Hudis fails to find any sympathetic characters in the cast. It's nice to see Diffring and Delgado playing the good guys for a change, but they have very little screen time at the end of the day.