The Large Rope

Seven years later this film's director & cameraman made 'Village of the Damned' from John Wyndham's 'The Midwich Cuckoos'. This earlier film has a more conventional plot (it's easy to guess whodunnit, for example) but the mood and look compares favourably with classic French rural dramas of the previous decade like 'Le Corbeau' and 'Panique'.

A large and largely unfamiliar cast include one of the first film appearances by Edward Judd and one of the last when she was still an unknown bit player by Katie Johnson.

Now I can imagine a long rope; or a thick rope - but can a rope actually be "large"? Anyway, enough of my pedantry. Donald Houston returns to his rural English village after being in prison for assaulting a women. When another local woman is murdered, he is the obvious suspect and must prove his innocence whilst avoiding the pursuing police and angry villagers. It is quite a fast moving story, and one of the few you will ever see that demonstrates any form of English social disobedience - the villagers almost descend into a lynch mob - of the constabulary. I thought it obvious who the real killer was from early on, but Wolf Rilla keeps it all moving well until a rather soppy, violin-inspired, conclusion.

A subject as old of the hill : the ex-convict, unfairly imprisoned , who comes back to his native village where he is not the welcome; he is definitely an outcast, and his place is no longer among the well-respected people ;only his mother and his old flame still trusts him .

The movie is too short and too hurried for comfort ,but it is an estimable work : pay attention to the girlies the newcomer unwittingly scares, it's one the details which urges the villagers to take the law in their own hand ,after a murder which takes place just at the moment when the unfortunate young guy arrives .The chase across the streets which may lead to a lynching is the best moment ,but the ending seems botched .

Before becoming known as THE LONG ROPE, director Wolf Rilla's THE LARGE ROPE meant that Donald Houston's central character, a young man released from jail and returning to his small hometown village, is basically caught right in the thick of it...

Not only does no one want him around, especially ex-girlfriend Susan Shaw and his former best friend she's marrying, but he winds up accused of murdering a flirtatious older woman played by an actress who made a living brilliantly playing them...

After Vanda Godsell's killed by a person she sees and we don't, what's a kind of frantic melodrama becomes a bonafide whodunnit, and Houston does a nice job frowning and arguing his way through various domiciles and a crowded pub full of drunks who basically want him dead...

Director Rilla, who'd later make another small town thriller in VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, keeps the pace on a hectically intriguing level, and the British actors (including Robert Brown, Peter Byrne and Edward Judd) are topnotch, going beyond the minuscule budget - that actually suits the desperate one-street purgatory.

Donald Houston returns to his small town after two years in prison. He was sent there by the testimony of Vanda Godsell, who admits to him that she lied when she said he assaulted her, but what's a girl to do? When she goes missing, Scotland Yard in the person of Richard Warner investigates, but the town isn't willing to let justice take its leisurely course.

Good performers are in abundance - although one of them speaks uniquely in this film in stages West-County-Old-Coot accents. Neither are the crowd scenes well directed. Still, despite the patent set-up, it's a decent study in mob hysteria.