Face of a Stranger

Directed in a bravura fashion by veteran film & TV director John Llewellyn Moxy, the greatly talented fellow behind Brit-Horror classic 'Horror Hotel' (1960). 'Face of a Stranger' is, perhaps, one of my favourite Edgar Wallace 60s crime thrillers, with an engaging, palm-tinglingly well-conceived plot over 'le crime passionelle', enjoying a terrifically vivid turn from sterling character actor Jeremy Kemp as the taciturn, charismatic, darkly duplicitous crim Vince, whose deeply nefarious plan to assume the identity of former cellmate John Bell (Philip Locke) in order to diabolically dupe John's beautiful blind wife Mary (Rosemary Leach) made for consistently exciting, twist-laden drama! With a far greater reliance on character, and narrative nuance than some of the more prosaic episodes of 'The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre', the strikingly erotic, steely-eyed Jeremy Kemp's ambivalent Vince being a singularly complex villain, not only remarkably multifaceted, but one with infinitely more sympathetic, relatable motives than one usually sees in the noisome, twin-fisted B&W Pulp fiction of the prolific, but not exactly varied oeuvre of the estimable crime writer Mr. Wallace, and it would prove entirely remiss if I didn't mention the no less fascinating performance from the extremely talented Rosemary Leach, her delightfully oblique Mary most certainly playing her cards close to her chest! 'Face of a Stranger' is, perhaps, one of Edgar Wallace's more refined and enduring mysteries'

I was quite taken with this movie. It is about a prison inmate who gets out to find that his wife is living with another man. He then visits the wife of a fellow inmate of whom he knows that he stashed the loot of a heist. He wants part of it, of course, but somehow he is also in search of consolation. The wive has gone blind so he pretends to be her husband. She seems to go for it - which if course is pretty weird and not really credible. But in the end it makes sense. The point is, that for both it is love at first sight (pun cannot be avoided) and they are a perfect match. The film succeeds in showing the mutual attraction of this odd and unlikely couple of two criminally minded but also vulnerable people. Jeremy Kemp gives his best, I feel he is an underestimated actor who only rarely could show his talenty beyond typecasting.

Easily the best of the Merton Park Edgar Wallace's, with a performance of real stature by Jeremy Kemp and possessed of an uncompromising nihilism and brutality permitted only to a potboiler with nothing to lose. It also provides the chance to see a very young Rosemary Leach, cast spectacularly against type.