Dial 999

The police come by, asking Mona Freeman about her husband, Gene Nelson. After they leave, he shows up, asking Miss Freeman and her brother, Michael Goodliffe, to help him get out of the UK; he didn't mean to kill the guy. Goodliffe thinks the thing to do is to deal with the police, but Miss Freeman backs her husband. This leads her on a circuitous journey through the rather kindhearted underworld on getting Nelson out of the UK without a passport.

Because I have no idea of how I would go about finding them, I found it an interesting exercise in dealing with ordinary, decent crooks and singleminded officialdom, in a path that leads from downtown London through what purports to be the rural parts of Kent. There's little character observation beyond simple types; the well organized, seemingly casual, and cautious criminals provide both barriers and help in a manner that seems very real, given director Montgomery Tully's quick pacing to keep the story going and making sure this second feature didn't much exceed an hour in length. With John Bentley, Sidney Tafler, and Paula Byrne.

'B' movie veteran Montgomery Tully does a slick job on this unusual crime thriller which turns into an extended high speed chase through Kent as an increasingly dishevelled looking Gene Nelson wanted for manslaughter disintegrates into a trembling mass of nerves while his hitherto loyal wife Mona Freeman takes charge and the wheel of a truck to keep them one step ahead of the law as part of an elaborate plan to shake off the increasingly exasperated rozzers and flee the country.

Like most British thrillers of this period a lot of the fun comes from seeing the streets of South London as they looked in the far off fifties, lined with vintage cars and filmed for maximum visual impact. If you listen carefully, at one point the library music used on the soundtrack is also recognisable as the theme from 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'!

This British production is quite unusual, for its time, in that the storyline develops in parallel. That is to say that whilst one enactment is taking place on screen, a part of the story is then shown in parallel, from elsewhere in the story. It is quite an effective manoeuvre and certainly draws the film from out of the ordinary run of similar type crime thrillers. Although, the basic premise of the story - man on the run trying to flee the country - is very simple, the production values, and solid playing by the cast, help to retain the viewer's interest and the film builds to a quite effective climax. Belief needs to be suspended, concerning the way in which the wife and brother-in-law rush to the aid of the obviously tarnished man-on-the-run, and the way in which he manages to dodge the clutches of the law. But this doesn't detract from the fact that this is an entertaining and reasonably exciting movie, which tries to be different.

The seven previous reviewers have said it all. I felt no sympathy at all for the fugitive, who had no redeeming features. Obviously the film's emphasis was on his nice, devoted wife and her efforts to help her husband flee, but there were times when I wondered how plausible some of the actions were. It's one of those films where watching it again might help me understand it better - or determine actual flaws in the plot.

John Bentley and Sidney Tafler took the acting honours, with a very mixed range of support cast. The acting of several of the women failed to impress, notably that of the woman in the bathrobe. And it was strange that the publisher called his secretary "Terri", which was the name of Mona Freeman's character.

I've often wondered about vehicles' lights in these old films. IIRC, in Britain side-lights only were permitted on roads with street lamps, but out in the country there were times when the vehicles seemed to have no lights at all. (Perhaps the "night" scenes were filled during the time, with a back filter??)

The British cinema was saturated with American actors in both A and B films in the 1950's. I know there were reasons for that too tedious to relate here, and sometimes the actors were good and sometimes downright bad in bad films. This film in a version called ' The Way Out ' was for me barely watchable. I did learn about how you got on and paid when you caught a bus and there was a freedom somehow in doing so which became more complicated over time. This is trivia, but then the film was the usual murder story and I knew at once who the killer was. No spoilers but a man has been killed in a bar called the Zanzibar and again trivia but the same sort of ridiculous names are given to such places in 2022. I really did learn a lot and the photography was passably good in showing me all these details in black and white ( most B films were made in black and white. ) A glimpse of the story. A wasted Gene Nelson ( remember the glorious musicals he danced his way through back then ? ) and once again he was dancing ( that was his natural movement ) away from the law. His wife played by Mona Freeman helps him and I really could not really work out why, and the the heat as they say was on. But sadly not in the acting which was pedestrian to say the least, and not a single role had any sort of character background. I may of course have gone to sleep through that if of course it was there. Now a note of irritation comes into this review. Why did the Americans have to nearly always change the titles of foreign films ( I class the UK as being foreign to the USA ) and I could make a list of them. Do the Americans not know or guess that ' Dial 999 ' means dialling an emergency number ? To sum up. I liked the photography and the scenes set outside the studio, but the rest I was totally bored with and the sadness of poor Gene Nelson having to act in this upset me. I consider him one of the greats but dragged down from his pedestal here.