Return of a Stranger

This is not an earlier version of Max Varnel's 1961 Danzigers quickie of the same name, although it it does also share a certain morbidity of subject; involving as it does a hero who returns after an absence of four years supposedly disfigured in a laboratory explosion and rendered unrecognisable by a couple of faint scars, a different hairstyle and the loss of his moustache.

Well photographed by veteran cameraman Jimmy Wilson but otherwise pedestrian and badly acted (except for Ellis Jeffreys as the heroine's mother commenting wryly from the sidelines, and Sylvia Marriott as the nice girl left back in the Transvaal who the hero should have married).

Victor Hanbury called it a day as a director after making this film, and is now best-known for the film he signed but didn't direct, 'The Sleeping Tiger', on which he 'fronted' for blacklistee Joseph Losey.

Rosalyn Boulter is engaged to Cecil Ramage. Nevertheless, she runs away with Griffith Jones. But they are pursued by her family's solicitor and his clerk, who is prepared to offer Jones five thousand pounds to disappear. Jones strikes him. The, fearing he has killed the solicitor, he tells Miss Boulter to pack and meet him at the tea shop around the corner. The clerk, seeing all that money, finishes off his employer and pockets the money. Jones is wanted for the murder and flees to South Africa, Miss Boulter marries Ramage, and four years pass.

Jones perfects the chemical he has been working on, and is called back to England to sell it to Ramage's company. Jones has had an accident which has left his face scarred and his mustache altered. No one has any trouble recognizing him, except Scotland Yard. Will he get away with Miss Boulter this time, or go to prison for a crime he did not commit?

There are some loose subplots left over from the stage version, like Sylvia Marriott, who works with him in South Africa and develops a passion for him. Also, despite attempts to open it up for the screen it remains very talky, and stiffly delivered talk at that, all on sets. With Athole Stewart, Peter Gawthorne, and David Farrar (in his screen debut).

This relatively unknown drama is typical fare for its time.

The leading man of the story is wrongly thought to be a murderer and flees his homeland when his fiancé also suspects him of the murder. Some years later he is facially disfigured while rescuing fellow workers from a chemical fire in his adopted country.

After recuperation from this heroic deed he is transferred back to England with a job promotion, unrecognizable as the person who left in disgrace. Naturally, the new appointment is with the same people who he was involved with before leaving, his ex. fiancé and all. It's not too long before several people start to realize just who he is, including the police.

Of course the true murderer is finally trapped by some deft police deduction. The ex. fiancé who had married an uncaring person in a cold relationship is divorced by the husband and is immediately swept up by our hero, presumably to live happily ever after.

The acting is quite good, the storyline plausible, and well worth a look. Four out of five stars from me.