One Jump Ahead

A small boy playing at a ruined churchyard follows a mysterious woman into the bowels of the church. She opens a secret compartment behind a brick wall. As the boy secretly watches, she is struck down and murdered by a mystery man. The frightened boy flees and the killer chases after him. The boy escapes but loses his cap in the process. The killer picks up the cap, which has a boys name tag sewn in the underside.

The killer sets out to silence the only witness. But fate is on the young lad's side. He had switched caps with a friend and it is his friend who the killer has mistakenly hunted and murdered. A clever reporter (Paul Carpenter) pieces together the clues and comes to realize the boy who witnessed the crime is still alive.

This would be considered a low budget British mystery. I found it to be little above average and a quite enjoyable 65 minutes.

Paul Banner, a "noozeman" of the Daily Comet in England, is an American (he's Canadian, actually) working in England. He happens on a murder that leads him on a complicated trail. He has a ex-love - Jill Adams, who puts on a passable US accent - and she's attempting to get him back - Meanwhile, another lady vies for his affections. Needless to say, he solves the crime. It was only about 1 Hr. 5 minutes and the pace continues along quite well. The photography was quite good and the acting wasn't as bad as many other films. All-in-all, quite acceptable. Paul Carpenter, who plays Banner, was only 33 at the time.(Looks a lot more). He only had 10 more years to live (I'm unsure of the cause of death - maybe someone out there can tell me.) Jill Adams, who plays the blond bombshell, is still alive as at 2002.

It's obvious why this British crime drama wasn't released in America - poor cast, poorer screenplay, and a final reel that is ridiculous on all levels. Even at just an hour of running time, the feature is padded with many scenes that go nowhere.

I was surprised at the favorable reviews in IMDb, given how little happens here. The bland hero played by Paul Carpenter (an unremarkable journeyman actor) gets beaten up twice -that's about all the action that occurs. His juggling two girlfriends is boring, and the low production values resemble a PRC or Monogram picture of a decade earlier.

I've enjoyed several exploitation movies directed by Charles Saunders, including "Womaneater" and "Nudist Paradise" and he made one classic film in 1944: "Tawny Pipit" (which I saw revived at MoMA -very highly recommended), but this one displays zero effort.

Paul Carpenter the Canadian actor who died early aged 42, appears here with another actor and ex-boxer who died early Freddy Mills, in another investigative role for his screen persona of Paul Banner, see also Behind the Headlines 1956.Whereas he is a reporter on The Daily Comet in One Jump Ahead, in the former film he is running his own news agency.Other reviewers have already explained the plot so I will confine myself to other matters.

Yes it was a mystery how Freddy Mills came to die with a shotgun by his side in a turning off Oxford Street in 1965 - a bigger mystery than this film!Was it suicide or a gangland killing?The cheeky schoolboy who appears at the beginning and barely escapes with his life, I remember seeing doing commercials on t.v. in the 1950s for Rowntrees Fruit Gums.As in Behind the Headlines with Hazel Court, Paul has a faithful and helpful British girlfriend who puts up with the rigours of his job.It was an adequate length of time approx 60 plus or so and would have constituted a B film back in the 1950s.It was an interesting enough film and I enjoyed seeing some old 1950s actors in British cast films again.I rated it 6/10.

Reporter Paul Carpenter is pursuing a story about a corpse found in a bombed-out church, and children scared out of their wits on the site. He's also in a tentative relationship with fellow reporter Diane Hart, but still stuck on a former lover, Jill Adams. She married a rich man, but has a habit of dropping in at his apartment when her husband is out of town.

It's a decent but uninspiring second feature directed by Charles Saunders, shot on a series of cheap sets. By the three-quarters mark, it's clear who did it, although not why. Also some of the dialogue near the end is too formal and overwritten. Still the performances are pretty good. Carpenter would play a reporter with the same name -- albeit in a supporting role -- for the some production company the following year. His career, which included 52 movie credits over 16 years, would with his death in 1964 at age 42.