Dick Barton Strikes Back

Very Early Hammer Cheapie when the Newly-Born Studio was Floundering About in a Number of Genres.

In this one Hammer Dumbs-Down Popular Radio Hero Barton to a Comedy-Adventure with Copious Amounts of Slapstick and Bad Mugging.

Certainly Made for a Juvenile Audience.

It's Lively, if Nothing Else, and Manages a Fast-Pace both in Montage and Dialog.

This Type of Speedy Line-Delivery is Reminiscent of Screw-Ball Comedies from Hollywood.

They also Borrow the Style and Tone of the Serials.

Most of the Action is Fisticuffs with a Couple of Car Romps and Bit on the Sea.

The Studio Saw the Error of Their Ways and the Sequels are Much Better.

Not Much to Offer Except Nostalgia for those that Lived Through the Early Years of the Brit. Hero.

Most of those Fans will be Disappointed with this Entry but can Look Forward to Better Movies Ahead.

In preparation for the latest edition of the "House of Hammer" podcast, I watched the 1949 film "Dick Barton Strikes Back", a proto James Bond crossed with Sherlock Holmes character, for whom Hammer made a series of films.

Dick Barton (Don Stanard) and his associate Snowy White (Bruce Walker) are turned on to new threat by a US agent, who subsequently turns up dead. Fouracada (Sebastian Cabot) has come to the UK to test a new weapon, and is not prepared for Barton to threaten it's progress. When the inhabitants of a northern town are all killed, simultaneously, in mysterious circumstances, it's up to Barton to track down Fouracada and save the nation again.

I actually quite liked this. Even with the stiff upper lip of it all, the performances were mostly solid and the film looks a lot better than the Hammer films from just a few years earlier. At just 68 minutes the story whizzes along, putting Barton in danger Saturday morning serial style before showing an unlikely escape. There's a "Hooded claw" style silent overlord for the villains, the reveal of whom is pretty obvious, but doesn't undermine the film, even when he reveals the entire plan at his time of triumph. The best bit though is the consistent use of "The Devil's Gallop" which was his theme tune at the time but has, unfortunately for the sincerity of the film, been entirely corrupted for me by Mitchell and Webb's "Digby Chicken Caesar" sketch.

There's a bit of post-war xenophobia with the villains coming from an unnamed foreign country but looking an awful lot like Romany gypsy stereotypes. The noise of the sonic weapon, which we hear for lengthy sections of the film is extremely annoying. The character of Snowy really doesn't add much, other than reflecting how great Barton is and his obsession with getting a pint of Bitter.

But when the Blackpool Tower finale reached it's conclusion (and I put my headphones back on) I was reasonably satisfied with what I'd seen.

Dick Barton Strikes Back was the second of Hammer's Dick Barton films to be released, but was actually the last to be filmed. It's easily the best of the three films, director Godfrey Grayson getting the formula just right, eschewing the comedy of the first film and largely avoiding the silly contrivances that ruined both Dick Barton Special Agent and Dick Barton at Bay. This one ups the seriousness and level of action and is all the better for it.

The result feels very much like a proto-James Bond adventure, with it's suave British hero (once again played by Don Stannard), a very Fleming-style villain in Fouracada (Sebastian Cabot), and a diabolical plot that sees the bad guys using a powerful sonic weapon of mass destruction to help their un-specified country to achieve world domination. There's even a femme fatale who turns ally in the form of Tina (Jean Lodge), and several scenes in which the antagonists have an opportunity to kill Barton once and for all, but instead opt to put him in a perilous situation from which he has a chance to escape. It makes one wonder whether Ian Fleming was inspired in some part by Barton when creating Bond.

After plenty of deft detective work, the main clue being a piece of jaunty gypsy music heard at the location of each of Fourocada's test sites, Barton tracks down the sonic device to the top of the Blackpool Tower. The final act is an exciting race against time as Barton fights his way to the top of the tower, past various henchmen, to confront the mastermind of the whole dastardly scheme.

Far better than the other Barton films, Dick Barton Strikes Back would have been followed by more adventures for the special agent, if only star Stannard hadn't been killed in a car crash shortly after filming - a real shame, because this one saw the series going in the right direction, and further films could have catapulted Stannard to super-stardom.

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

this was the second film in the Dick Barton boxed set.It is better than Dick Barton secret Agent because it would be virtually impossible for it to be worse.The location shots are a big plus but the silly plot is almost terminal boredom.What is worse the noise emitted by the machine at the climax sounds like a police siren and goes on and on.It gave me a headache so i had to double the disc speed so i could not its incessant wailing on the soundtrack.the fight scenes are not very well orchestrated.It is rather strange that apart from the 3 leads no other actors names are shown with the front credits.Perhaps they asked that this be done to spare their blushes.I have one more to view.I hope it gets better.

There is just something about the theme music that forgives just about everything else with these entertaining, if unchallenging mysteries. This one sees the suave Don Stannard in the title role, on the trail of some dastardly villains bent on world domination using a mind-controlling frequency. Director Godfrey Grayson offers us quite a well paced intrigue with plenty of action, the double-dealing "Tina" (Jean Lodge) and a tense little conclusion that passes an hour easily enough. The production is basic, and in this particular story the audio effects of their device did prove to be actually quite annoying after a while. Luckily there is no real jeopardy whatsoever so that's soon sorted out. Though entirely predictable, I still quite enjoyed it.