Landslide

"Quota quickies" - don't you just hate them? Cheap, formulaic plot, casting and and performances with sets so small and minimal that they would make a newsreader claustrophobic and not stretch his/her dramatic abilities. I give them a rating of 5 meaning that I don't care if I watch them or not. Not irritatingly bad, just neither here nor there. This film is extravagantly imaginative and boldy goes over the top and almost off the rails.

An end-of-the-pier theatrical review troupe facing a catastrophe not just life-threatening but genuinely claustrophobic too. The troupe are reminiscent of JB Priestley's in his theatrical perennial The Good Companions (1930s version) - gossipy and superficial. How would they behave facing real disaster: unified and calmly? Landslide defies comparison indeed almost defies description but is spirited and quite entertaining. Visually too, it boldly goes with the special effects and set. Two of the stars would later rise to stardom in Britain (and then the Dominions) Jimmy Handley and Dinah Sheridan.

One of a kind. A slight shadow over it being the real events of just 20 years later in the same Welsh Valleys - the landslide which enveloped a school killing nearly all children and staff.

LANDSLIDE is a murder mystery set in and around a natural disaster - a landslide which seals actors inside a Welsh theatre. Not only must the trapped survivors contend with the usual clichés of the disaster genre: a lack of oxygen, dwindling supplies, no hope of rescue - but there's also a murderer on the prowl, and he's one of their own.

Everything about LANDSLIDE screams quota quickie filler. It seems to have been written in a hurry with no real attention to facts or realism, and the repeated attempts at humour don't really play out very well. It's also rather obviously a low budget production, but I was surprised at the effectiveness of the landslide scenes, which are well staged.

The murder mystery stuff is less effective given that the identity of the murderer is obvious from the very early scenes. There's also a lot of over the top acting on display here, with various characters displaying larger than life mannerisms and others given over to hysterical laughter. Still, the film is notable for featuring the double pairing of the young Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan, two actors who would go on to marry five years later.

This quota quickie features a story about an abysmally bad troupe of players trapped in a Welsh theater after 1) the murder of the box office lady and 2) a landslide that buries the theater. Obviously made on the cheap, but there's something very compelling (if silly) about the whole thing. It helps that Dinah Sheridan (her film debut) and Jimmy Hanley are the attractive young (and smart) leads. There's also a compulsive whirlwind type who seems to be bouncing all over the stage or playing piano. The credits list him as Ernie Westo, an actor who had a small silent career in the teens playing a comic character named Mike Murphy. Anyway, a dumb cop tries to solve the murder before those trapped die of asphyxiation or starvation, since they have to subsist on the chips (French fries) an old lady brought to the theater.

A quota quickie, notable for an early pairing of later real life partners Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan in the lead; their likable performances being one of the few assets. Donovan Pedelty was one of the few quickie producers to include settings outside the home counties, often in Ireland, and in this case Wales. That is the only distinction however, and like so many others of its type it is overburdened with a surfeit of dialogue. The direction of the actors is flat; and despite the classic situation of a killer at large among an isolated group, followed by the landslide (the one element that is at all convincing) very little tension is generated amid the constant prattle, shouting and hysterics. Ben Williams, who played bit parts in innumerable British films for decades, is given a decent role and proves to be one of the better performers while Bruno Barnabe, often cast as oily Middle Eastern types, is a creepy stage hand with an alarming hairpiece.

In a small Welsh town, a theatre box-office cashier is murdered. When a landslide occurs, all the occupants find themselves trapped in the building with the murder among them and a potential for more victims.

A low budget murder mystery and disaster movie all in one, it says what it is on the tin, but not much more. With a better budget and director, it feels that more could have been done woth this film with potential.