Shadow of Fear

There were lots of spy films made in the early sixties due no doubt to the success of the James Bond films,and this is one of the lesser examples.Its only real interest is showing locations in and around the Brighton area,as this is one of the last films made at Brighton studios.The problem with this film is that by and large it is all talk and no action.When there is action it is very poorly staged .What is worse is that in the final scene many of the remaining points have to be cleared up by explanatory dialogue.At that point all one can wonder what characters he is talking about.The film also suffers for a rather slow pace.So alas this is not a hidden masterpiece.

Paul Maxwell is an oil executive about to fly to England, where he will spend some time with fiancee Clare Owen, then on to New York. An Englishman asks him to give a message to a man in London, explaining it's Secret Service stuff. Maxwell agrees. At the airport he is met by what he thinks is the man..... only he's not. He and Miss Owen agree to act as bait to trap the bad guys.

It's a nice set-up for a spy thriller, but then the script continues in the most boring way imaginable, with two men at a time on tiny sets talking about what is going on. The end opens up a little, as the action moves to boats on the Thames..... as two men at a time, on tiny sets, discuss what is going on. It's all very dull stuff, despite the belly dancer in the first sequence.

SHADOW OF FEAR is another cheap and uneventful thriller that comes to us courtesy of Butcher's Film Service. This one was filmed at Brighton Studios and makes some good use of wide open coastal photography, although the attempts to bring to life the Middle East on a non-existent budget are less than successful. The hero is the stolid Paul Maxwell (one of those unfamiliar leads with zero charisma) who is approached by a government contact in Baghdad and tasked with taking a message back to England to give to the secret service.

Unfortunately for Maxwell the contact is killed and a criminal gang show up in England to capture him. He escapes and with his girlfriend flees to the south coast, where the police plan to use the pair in a sting operation to catch the gang members. Unfortunately despite that story this short tale is anything but snappy; there's barely any action in it and, even worse, little suspense. The characters just go through the talky motions here without feeling invested in the tale. The only actor I recognised was Eric Pohlmann in support as one of the baddies. SHADOW OF FEAR is one of those films you can forget about entirely around ten minutes after viewing.

But that's about it. The premise is promising - a British agent in Baghdad gives an oilman a coded message to deliver in London - but the whole thing is boringly and blandly shot, and the acting would shame the Charles Vance Players. Even the Haslemere Thespians could have done a better job.

It was an awful fashion year, and the oilman's rather chunky girlfriend sports some frumpy outfits and the most dreadful hat I think I've ever seen.

An American oil company representative called Bill Martin (Paul Maxwell) on his way to London from Baghdad agrees to deliver a top secret message to MI5. On his arrival he is abducted by two men posing as police officers and taken to a small hotel where he meets Sharp (John Arnett) who claims to be his contact man but in actual fact is in charge of a ring of enemy agents. Martin hands over the message but makes the mistake of letting Sharp know that he has a photographic memory, which makes him a marked man. He escapes to his girlfriend, Barbara (Clare Owen), who introduces him to her uncle, John Bowen (Colin Tapley), who has connections with MI5. At his home on the Sussex coast, Martin is introduced to his real contact, Oliver (Reginald Marsh), who tells him that the top secret message contained map references for enemy rocket bases. Martin agrees to help Oliver round up Sharp's gang by setting himself and Barbara up as bait and the pair check into a Seaford hotel watched closely by MI5 agents waiting for the enemy to make their move...

The title promises a suspenseful, tense and action packed spy thriller but it cannot ultimately disguise the fact that this is a mediocre British b-pic (made by quota-quickie specialists Butcher's) in every sense of the word. Director Ernest Morris was a true b-pic veteran who clocked up an impressive twenty-two of these routine features in eight years! Here he is defeated by the script which consists of much talk in small rooms (hotel rooms actually) and precious little action apart from a car chase and a climax on board Sharp's boat where the villains plan to dump Martin and Barbara overboard but these are listlessly staged and provide no thrills or spills. There is very little to watch apart from the location shooting along the Sussex coast which is attractively shot in black and white by lighting cameraman Walter J Harvey and trivia buffs will recognise Eric Pohlmann in the cast who voiced the unseen Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the early James Bond movies.