Passenger to London

The most interesting thing about this movie to me is that I didn't recognize a single name on the cast or crew lists. Oh, I know I've seen co-lead Jenny Laird before; she had roles in BLACK NARCISSUS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and a key serial of the original DOCTOR WHO, "Planet of the Spiders". However, this is a real Quota Quickie, with a plot which the characters explain to each other in dialogue, so I would imagine she, like most of the cast, were not terribly expensive. The producer directed, the music only appears at key moments and the whole thing times out at 57 minutes.

Some plans have been stolen, and the agent who had recovered them for King and Country has been shot on a train. However, anticipating this, he managed to get off a note to Aubrey Pollock indicating that he has secreted them on Miss Laird. Mr. Pollock sends John Warwick to recover them. Warwick, in short order, ingratiates himself to Miss Laird, locks a couple of spies seeking the plans in their room and flees with Miss Laird, back to London for a denouement.

Director of Photography Stanley Grant -- best known, probably, for special effects in IN WHICH WE SERVE -- gets one tracking shot and some nice low-key lighting to strut his stuff. However, while this film is short enough to be tolerable, there's little here to make it terribly interesting on its own terms or because of where it fits into cinema's history.

This low budget spy thriller about the murder of an agent who had retrieved some stolen blueprints which he hid in the luggage of an unsuspecting fellow train passenger just minutes before being murdered is quite entertaining and zips along at a good pace. This is due in no small part to the engaging lead actors, John Warwick and Jenny Laird. I had not heard of these actors before but evidently they went on to pretty solid television careers. Laird appeared in some TV shows (Morse and Midsomer Murders) that I am sure I've seen. The residential hotel setting was interesting and the minor subplot of the exchanges between the hotel manager and an irritating and daffy guest were amusing. Watching this is a pleasant way to spend 57 minutes.

An early quickie made for Fox British in which director Lawrence Huntingdon shows nascent promise in the scene in the train between Neufchâtel and Dieppe played out without music, relying for suspense largely on just the noise of the train; on which a couple of extremely mean-looking foreign spies played by Ivan Wilmot and Paul Neville are at large, the latter (who carries a flick knife) even looking a bit like Eric Pohlmann (then still resident in Vienna).

The fatalistic line "One government's as good as another. I don't know what all the fuss is about!" sadly still resonates eight decades later.

Made at Fox Studios in Wembley which would become the television studios of ARTV in 1955 when they started broadcasting in London.This film is a routine quota quickiemail which still has its moments nonetheless.The sort of double act between landlady Dorothy Deerhurst and elderly guest Sybil Brooke is rather endearing.

Don't expect to be sat on the edge of your seat but at 50 minutes long this creaky old spy thriller is awash with old world charm in the form of a cheery-chappy hero, a hapless young damsel, pantomime villains and stuffy establishment figures. A British agent is murdered trying to smuggle secret blueprints back home and manages to hide them in the luggage of a female passenger before he is done for. Who will get to her first? The Secret Service or the murderous thugs? Suspend disbelief and don't worry about the daft characters. This is actually quite tense in its own way and a nostalgic glimpse at a world long since passed.