You Pay Your Money

Another cheap B film produced by Butcher Studios with a tale of kidnapping and rare book smuggling. Thrown in to give the film a sense of 'mystery' is a Middle Eastern connection, which adds neither mystery nor sense. The storyline is weak, the dialogue is awful and the acting is poor. All of the characters are one dimensional and all seem to be going through the motions. Our American sleuth/hero, played by Hugh McDermott, never seems to work up a sweat or express any range of emotions. He ambles through every scene, with Honor Blackman, his love interest, looking frankly bored by the whole thing. The pace of the film never moves out of first gear. I felt at times I was watching a rather good televised amateur dramatic performance! However, if you want to study clothes, cars and furniture, as well as the drinking and smoking habits of the middle class set in 1957, this film may be of some interest.

The story is pedestrian, the acting indescribable and the sets seem buried from some other movie. No living people ever spoke dialogue like this, like a Home Service 'drama'. At one point Honor Blackman becomes almost animated when her car horn upstages her. McDermid creeps into the hotel like a cartoon wolf under cover of this dialogue by numbers. His detective skills are not exactly Hercule Poirot and the demands of the script cannot be the cause of his mugging to camera. All of the cast speak in turn- like an old- time radio phonecall, ship to ship. Hilton and Blackman show all the acting skills of photographic models in a clothing catalogue. 75 minutes I won't get back.

A stodgy, late '50s-era thriller from Butcher's Film Productions. This one's a lamentable effort about an everyday guy getting mixed up with a gang of Middle Eastern smugglers. When he discovers that his delectable wife has been kidnapped by the group, he must go after them to seek her safe return.

There's some mild intrigue in this film, and a few characters who double-cross each other, but for the most part it's very dull and it lacks the lively charm of other productions like SMOKESCREEN or IMPACT. Hugh McDermott was a poor choice for the film's hero; his American accent is awful and he seems uninterested in the proceedings.

In a bid to spice things up there are a couple of fight scenes thrown into the mix but they have more in common with a bar-room brawl in the Wild West than a genteel British thriller. Watch out for the lovely Honor Blackman who is given little to do as the kidnapped wife.

Following an attempted burglary at the home of financier Steve Mordaunt, his assistant and trouble shooter Bob Westlake, (Hugh McDermott), and his wife Susie, (Honor Blackman) investigate. The mysterious behaviour of Mordaunt's lover Rosemary Delgado (Jane Hylton), a former mistress of a major fraudster, leads them to an extremist group desperate to obtain the writings of one Achmed, a 14th Century seer, which are included in a consignment of rare and valuable books which the financier is importing, and from which they intend to incite a revolution across the Middle East...

This plays like an early version of an episode of one of those crime/adventure/espionage series that flourished on British television in the sixties and early seventies. The plot could form the basis of an Avengers adventure with Cathy Gale, but here Honor Blackman is given little to do apart from looking as glorious and delectable as ever, not least on the occasion when she emerges from a swimming pool. She's later taken hostage by some of the motley gang of villains, and though threatening to kick leading thug Ferdy Mayne "in the teeth", while apologising for the "unladylike expression", that's about all her character is allowed to do in the situation. The striking Jane Hylton does what she can in the under-written part of the scheming Rosemary, and it's left unexplained how she knew more about the nature of some of the books than her wealthy lover did himself. Hugh McDermott is fine as the lead.

There are one or two examples of unusual casting. Basil Dignam, who almost always played army officers and other professional men is self-effacing chauffeur Currie, and Hugh Moxey struggles to conceal his plummy tones as the street wise Tom Cookson, the somewhat unlikely "uncrowned king of the Soho underworld". All good entertainment though.

For a film with a 'MacGuffin' about Middle-eastern unrest it seems slightly ironic when a headline on McDermott's newspaper inadvertently reveals that it was shot in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

It is a rather confused narrative, with newly married Hugh McDermott and Honor Blackman a pair of for-hire smugglers. They're hired by Ivan Samson to shift a couple of crates of smuggled books, while Samson enjoys the company of Jane Hylton. Soon enough, however, competing forces wearing fezzes stick their noses into the action, and McDermott bends his efforts towards getting back his wife.

Although she is third billed, Miss Blackman gets a lot of starlet build-up in this cheap movie, showing off her figure in in a one-piece bathing suit, and her athleticism just as the plot goes silly. There's a couple of unlikely bouts of fisticuffs and a shoot-out, and director Maclean Rogers avoids long takes and dialogue scenes with more than one person in a shot. It shows itself to be a cheap B movie throughout, but there is some nice chemistry between McDermott and Miss Blackman in the opening sequences.