Noose for a Lady

This is a neat thriller. The acting is good, and what's more important is that it is 1953 and Capital Punishment is the focus of the film. It was good to show back then that there were innocent men and women being executed in this country. On the surface it does not attack the system, but in one essential way it does. If an innocent person is executed, then it puts to shame the whole concept of murder by state murder. Also 1953 was one of the most appalling years in UK judicial history. Homosexual men were rounded up as never before and imprisoned, and state execution was considered ' normal ' by most so-called decent people. It was a brave act to make this film and to make a basically indifferent public aware that the wrong person could be caught and hanged. The Craig/Bentley case posed many questions, but it took Ruth Ellis to realise that Capital Punishment was a crime in itself. In the more enlightened Sixties both Homosexuality and Capital punishment showed many in the public that new laws were needed and death by execution was abolished and homosexuality was partly decriminalised. This film was a step forward, and the anguish on the condemned woman's face speaks volumes. For this alone and her acting it is worth seeing, and to reflect on how much was wrong back in the Fifties. Wolf Rilla keeps the pace going, and all within one hour and sixteen minutes. Not great, but necessary.

Pamela Alan is to hang for murdering her husband. Cousin Dennis Price comes in from Uganda and proposes to find the real murderer with the help of Rona Anderson, Miss Alan's stepdaughter.

Wolf Rilla's first feature feature after toiling for a decade in the BBC's television division is a rather straightforward mystery in which Price proposes to prove that the British justice system has gotten it all wrong with the skeptical help of police sergeant George Merritt. This includes all the traditional appurtenances of such stories, including the scene where he gathers all the suspects together. He has little trouble accumulating two additional corpses and several people with some excellent motives and opportunities. This makes one wonder what the police and the defense had been doing.

Rilla handwaves this away, and deals with the endless talking and the help of Walter J. Harvey's gracefully moving camera. The result is a good, if unexceptional murder movie although I suspected the actual murderer about halfway through. There were enough decent red herrings to keep me in doubt until the revelation.

A really neat little thriller, the story plays fair and the killer comes as a real surprise. The cast work well together and Dennis Price is a reliable lead as the solver of the crime. Well worth 90 minutes of your time.

John Hallam is poisoned and wife Margaret tried and sentenced to death for the crime. There's only seven days left to the execution when her cousin Simon Gale (Dennis Price) a colonial official from Uganda turns up unexpectedly and assisted by Margaret's stepdaughter Jill (Rona Anderson) endeavours to prove her innocence. He learns that Hallam was a sadist and blackmailer, not for money, but to torment his victims and that several of his acquaintances have something to hide. They include Upcott (Charles Lloyd Pack) whose wife has disappeared in mysterious circumstances and a major (Colin Tapley) responsible for the unnecessary death of troops under his command during the war. Local poacher Jonas Rigg (Robert Brown) has an important clue to the killer, but is himself poisoned before he can talk. And Margaret's time is running out...

Based on Gerald Verner's book of the same name, which in turn was the novelisation of his radio serial, it's no great surprise to find this, like so many other British films of its type, has an abundance of dialogue. There are also very few exterior shots, but it is gripping, with a considerable amount of tension. It's an archetypal 'whodunit' with a host of characters whom act in a suspicious manner or have some dark secret. There's the time-honoured gathering of all the suspects in a locked room: "One of you is the murderer". It's done with considerable power and effect though. Dennis Price, in the period after he had ceased to be a major star and before becoming a much admired character actor is good in the lead, as is Rona Anderson, who will always have a special place in the hearts of fans of British B movies of the era. Veteran character actress Esma Cannon is spiteful spinster Miss Ginch and popular opera singer Ian Wallace pops up in a small role as the pub landlord. Hardly seen since its original release, it's certainly worth watching, so well done to those DVD companies who are giving these modest but enjoyable films a new lease of life.

Dennis Price plays the urbane and English gentleman on leave from colonial Uganda where he is a district commissioner. However, when he goes to visit his cousin in a quaint English village, he finds to his horror that she is in prison, waiting to be hanged for poisoning her husband. The storyline is very much in the same mould of an Agatha Christie crime novel, with Price playing the sleuth, investigating all the potential suspects in the village. I enjoyed this low budget film as the acting is first rate and the dialogue is convincing, albeit somewhat dated for today's audiences. The ending of the film is rather theatrical and staged, as Price gathers all the suspects in one room stating that one of them is the murderer. However, despite this cliched scene, it's a film that is well worth watching just to see the incomparable Dennis Price in a role where he doesn't play the villain.