The Impersonator

A rather quickly-paced, at times funny, murder mystery about an American flyer (John Crawford) who becomes embroiled in an investigation after a women is murdered in a sleepy British village. Jane Griffiths is a local school mistress whom he had befriended, and together they try to find the true culprit who might just have been seen by a young boy (John Dare) obsessed with "Mother Goose". This is quite an interesting observation on suburban British life at the time - the local prejudices against the "marauding" American airmen; popularity of provincial theatre and the delight young children took from a simple pantomime.

USAF sergeant John Crawford is told off by his colonel to take fifty local children to the Christmas pantomime to make the locals like them. No such thing happens of course, since the head of the school board lives right under a flight path and the local biddies go hmmph! About Yanks throwing away money and they can take their own brats to the pantomime if they want. It does get him a date with Jane Griffiths, but they cancel the bus on him and she leaves after waiting. When he shows up at the rendezvous, Patricia Burke is closing up, so he asks her. After a perfectly nice time, he bids her goodnight, he heads back to the base, and she walks into a murderer. The police, being in let's-arrest-the-wrong-guy mode, settle immediately on Crawford as a suspect.

It's a perfectly ordinary thriller, since there's no mystery involved, but it does show a goodly part of a British Christmas pantomime, which is new to me. It's the fourth and final movie directed by Alfred Shaughnessy, who spent most of his career as a writer. His best-remembered writing? He did about a third of the scripts for UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. He died in 2005, age 89.

Atmospheric little B feature from Bryanston studios featuring John Crawford as a US sergeant playing the clean cut good guy with eyes for Jane Griffith's prim schoolteacher. Events take an unexpected course and tensions build, with nasty and violent consequences (although the true emotional impact of this is not dwelled upon).

Undoubtedly enjoyable, especially in the recreation of a provincial English town leading up to Christmas 1960/61, the film however misses the opportunity - probably due to budget restrictions - to take the audience down a more uncertain path (what about those face scratches....?). The panto scenes are fun, if a little overlong; John Salew excels as a thoroughly creepy almost Dickensian character guaranteed to make the flesh crawl...

When a USAF sergeant stationed on a base in England is suspected and then accused of murdering a woman, both he and a local school teacher must race to clear his name and find the real killer.

Fascinating mix of pedestrian acting, atmospheric scenes and period themes in this British B movie. All the action occurs against the backdrop of how a small, provincial English town exists alongside a US air base. Mostly depicted as drunken revellers, the USAF flyers are viewed with irritation and eventual hostility by the local townsfolk. Added to this is an interesting depiction of a working single mother, balancing parenthood, running a business and trying to chase some semblance of a social life - all credit to Burke here, as she captures Mrs. Lloyd's strengths and vulnerability in equal measure. The central relationship between Crawford's Sgt. Jimmy Bradford and Griffiths's prim school teacher lacks credibility, although whether this is due to performance or the extreme differences in character etc. is open to debate.

In lots of ways this is just a standard 'wrong man' procedural, yet there are a number of elements that raise it above the mundane - the eerie lighting and sound during the two evening scenes in the town's municipal gardens; the relish with which the murderer approaches his victim - almost drooling and glistening with depraved pleasure; the sweetness of the children enjoying the pantomime and most of all an astonishing performance by John Dare as the little boy caught up in a nightmare. A more natural performance by a child actor would be hard to find - witness the delight on his face as he watches the pantomime, his sadness and bewilderment momentarily forgotten, and best of all the simple sequence where he wakes up, crawls out of bed and wanders around the house looking for his mother, gradually realising that for the first time in his young life his mother isn't there. This sequence alone is worth the 'price of admission' and all credit to Shaughnessy for creating such an extraordinarily moving, even shattering scene.

Not a masterpiece by any means then, but definitely worth a look.