Lady in the Fog

Cesar Romero is an American PI trapped in London, waiting for the fog to lift so his plane can take off. He's passing the time in a bar with Lois Maxwell when a Peeler comes in to use the phone. A man has been struck and killed by a car. Miss Maxwell is convinced that it's her brother, so she and Romero go to look. It's as she feared. She is convinced he was murdered, but Romero's contacts in CID are retired, and there are lots of traffic accidents in Pea-soupers. So Romero and Miss Maxwell investigate.

It's a rather old-fashioned movie for 1952; hardly surprising, considering it's financed by Lippert and Hammer. Nonetheless, it's a nicely put together thriller, that leads to some unlikely places, with decent performances; director Sam Newfield, who spent too much of his career at PRC, demonstrates that given a decent script, he can turn out a good movie.

Cesar Romero ("O'Dell") is a visiting American sitting in a bar in London making a drink that wouldn't have looked out of place in Merlin's laboratory. He and the barman are trying to encourage the sceptical "Peggy" (Lois Maxwell) to partake when a police man enters the bar to use the phone to report an hit and run accident outside. She is expecting her brother - could he be the victim? Well it turns out he was, and now she and "O'Dell" determine to find out whether or not it was an accident and to get to the bottom of things. The mystery element of this is all a little procedural, but there is a bit of chemistry between Romero and Maxwell; there is quite a fun sub-plot between the American and his travel agent "Boswell" (Frank Birch) who is trying to repatriate him despite a pea-soup fog at the airport, and Geoffrey Keen finds himself with a more substantial part to deliver as the suspicious "Hampden". The aforementioned fog and the creepy Ivor Slaney score also contribute well to this by-the-numbers, but quite passable crime-noir.

Lady in the Fog also known as Scotland Yard Inspector is a low budget British quota quickie. An early effort from Hammer as it adapted a BBC radio serial

American actor Cesar Romero plays Phil O'Dell. A writer stuck in London.

He comes to the aid of Heather McMara, whose brother Danny was run over on a nightime road in the fog.

It seems Danny might have been involved in a blackmail plot involving an actress and a film producer.

It all harked back to a garage fire several years earlier that led to the the death of a man.

There is a little bit of everything here. Mystery, comedy, a love interest, a strange man locked in an asylum.

The plot is plodding and not always coherent. Romero makes it all so watchable.

Journalist Cesar Romero (O'Dell) spends some time at the beginning of the film mixing up a cocktail which firstly explodes before you can drink it. That along with the sequences of the 'lady in the fog' of the title at the wheel of her car are the only memorable parts to the film. What a shame.

This film could have been good if the story had stuck with mystery and tension. Unfortunately, being British, guess what? We get comedy oom-pah-pah music when showing scenes with policemen and also with a travel booking clerk. It's just so funny?! The cast are all forgettable in this nonsense that seems complicated because it fails to keep you engaged.

Romero's career must have been at rock bottom at this point. Thankfully, Batman was on the horizon for him in the next decade.

(Some Spoilers) Suave and handsome Cesar Romaro as American journalist Phil O'Dell has his hands full in "Lady in the Fog" in both charming the ladies and jumping out of windows as he solves a murder case that's 13 years old. In fact nobody knew it was a murder until Phil got wise to it.

All this started when Danny McMara,Richard Johnson, was purposely run down in the fog one evening by a mysterious lady friend of his. Danny's sister Heather, Bernadette O'Farrell, just happened to be Phil's girlfriend who took it upon himself to solve her brother death in what everyone at the time, including Scotland Yard, thought was just a tragic accident. Getting worked over by this shadowy thug Connors, Reed De Rover,a number of times and almost being arrested by the London Police for interfering in their investigation of Danny McMara's death Phil eventually gets to the bottom to why Danny was murdered and who was behind it.

It turns out that Danny had uncovered the murder of this inventor that took place in 1939 that was made to look, by his killers, to be an accident. The inventor died when his laboratory caught fire in a freak accident. Danny getting too close to the truth and at the same time blackmailing the killers ended up himself being murdered, that was made to look like an accident, by one of those whom he unknowingly, his girlfriend, was blackmailing!

Phil, on a tip he got, getting inside the Glenhaven Sanitarium finds the only person-the nutty as a fruitcake-Martain Sorrowby, Llyod Lamble, who knows the truth about that 1939 covered-up arson murder. Sorrowby, who's mind is completely lost in Ga-Ga land, can lead Phil to not only the truth behind the unidentified inventors murder but at the same time the murder of Danny McMara. Just as Phil was about to get Scotland Yard inspector Rigby, Campbell Singer, to come over to Gleanhaven to interview Sorrowby he, like Danny, died in a suspicious car accident just outside the sanitarium.

Realizing just what he got himself into Phil together with Heather track down Danny's killers but not before Heather, who had no idea whom she was dealing with, almost ended up getting murdered herself by someone, a friend of her's and Danny's, that she thought that she knew, and trusted, but really didn't!

Worth watching in that fact that that we see legendary Hollywood Latin Lover Cesar Romaro playing a Humphrey Bogart type private investigator. Getting belted by the bad guys all over the place Caser, or Phil O'Dell, still didn't lose his both good looks and sense of humor, he also has the best as well as last line in the movie, despite all the hits he took to the head and body, as well as his inflated ego, in the film.