Tread Softly Stranger

TREAD SOFTLY STRANGER is a tense and immersive British film noir featuring a headlining performance from Diana Dors at her most sultry and alluring. The story is a basic love triangle compounded by money worries, which lead to robbery and murder, all set within a grim and run-down northern industrial town. The opening scenes, which show off a fabulous and elaborate rooftop location complimented by Dors and her morning exercise routines, are great and racy stuff indeed.

I always feel that when a British B-movie thriller gets everything right then it's head and shoulders above rival American fare and that's the case here. This tale was originally adapted from a play but the cinematic version gets everything right and in particular the cast is a fine one.

Dors obviously holds the attention with her bombshell performance, but the real star of the thing is the underrated Terence Morgan (CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB) who propped up many a B-movie with his villainous turns. He has more depth to his character than usual and does very well with it. George Baker - TV's Inspector Wexford - plays the straight role and is very nearly as good, and a young Patrick Allen rounds off the cast.

I consider that this title is the late Diana Dors best film and I have quite a few in my DVD collection.Produced in 1958 when she was at her peak she has a memorable scene when she recounts her lowly slum- like upbringing to George Baker of how she made her way "out of the gutter up onto the pavement".It reminded me of an Oscar Wilde quote by Lord Darlington from "Lady Windermere's Fan" "...some of us may be in the gutter but we are looking up at the stars".1958 was the year that the wonderful "A Night to Remember" was made and I spotted three actors from that film in "Tread Softly Stranger", namely Joseph Tomelty" (Joe Ryan) as Dr. O'Loughlin, Russell Napier (Potter) as Capt. Stanley Lord and Thomas Heathcote (Sgt. Lamb) as a 1st class smoking room steward.Diana was well supported by Terence Morgan and George Baker and I disagree with a previous reviewer, it did not have an Anglicized/American script - I checked the nationality of the two scriptwriters James George Minter/Denis O'Dell before writing this review.The film also had an authentic bleak northern industrial landscape.Remember also we have many Irish people working in our country.

When George Baker burnt the stolen money and flushed the embers down the sewer and disposed of the revolver I thought the brothers may have succeeded in their robbery, but of course the censor stepped in like they did in the 1950s to ensure we citizens kept on the straight and narrow.Overall I rated it excellent and it kept my interest all through and I rated it 8/10

The stunningly beautiful Diana Dors gets involved with two brothers in "Tread Softly Stranger," a 1958 British 'B' movie. It's on a set of six films called "British Cinema," and it's by far the best of the lot.

Dors is Calico, a real slut, albeit a gorgeous one, who is hanging out with a nerdy office worker, Dave Mansell (Terence Mansell), an accountant in a nearby factory. Then his brother Johnny (George Baker), a handsome con man running away from a bad debt, comes to town. Calico quickly switches allegiance, but keeps her options open. When Johnny finds out that Dave is 300 pounds short in the accounts because of embezzling to buy Calico gifts, he decides to hock the watch Dave gave Calico, add his own money to it, and gamble on a sure thing. With an impending audit coming up, there isn't much time to replace the money.

Unfortunately, Calico has another idea. While Johnny is at the race track and winning, Calico convinces Dave that Johnny isn't coming back and insists that he just rob the factory of all its money - that way, the shortfall won't show up. She promises Dave that if he does it, she will go away with him. Turns into a real mess.

This is a very suspenseful story, very dark and loaded with atmosphere. One gets the feeling of a small, crummy factory town. The acting is good; Dors is a knockout. Definitely work seeing.

When the British make a "B" movie, they tend to get it right -- and "Tread Softly Stranger" is a good example. George Baker as Johnny has left London and returned to his childhood home -- a scraggy northern town -- to escape the bookmakers who are screaming for his hide. His brother, Dave, a payroll clerk at a local steel mill, is a wimp, hopelessly smitten with next door neighbor Diana Dors. When the brothers set out to heist the mill's payroll, everything that can possibly go wrong does -- no surprise. But there's a nifty twist at the end that certainly is surprising. The atmosphere -- from grubby pubs to the factory's blistering operations -- provide a colorful backdrop. Worth watching.

This is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it IS fun, lots of fun. The characters are real people with all the frailties and peculiarities that make them interesting. Even though I half expected the outcome it didn't really matter because the way there was so much fun to watch. Nobody was perfect, all good or all bad, just real. Of the two brothers one began as shady and questionable character and the other as an upright citizen but as the film progressed they switched places. The transition was believable and based on facts clearly brought out in the script. Diana Dors was the fulcrum about whom the entire exercise revolved and she did an excellent job playing a woman who is confident of her appeal, willing to use it, but is anything but one-dimensional.

So what's not to like? I can't help but think that in the hands of a better director this could have been much, much better. Those same elements that made it fun could have made it great had they been handled more expertly. Dors' sensuality was shamelessly exploited and don't get me wrong, I just as shamelessly enjoyed every bit of it. But there were some superfluous shots that did nothing to advance the plot and appear to have been inserted just to give us another look at this gorgeous woman. And then there was the theme song, played to distraction. I for one, don't get the connection. What do the words "Tread Softly Stranger" have to do with the relationship between two brothers and a woman?

But in the long run, even though I can't rate it any higher, I heartily enjoyed this film and will gladly do so again. For those who haven't yet seen it do so immediately.