The Blue Parrot

One of the perks of the 'B' movie is that occasionally it gives a leading role to an actor one would not otherwise have associated with movies. Ten years before the role for which she is remembered in the original cast of 'Dr Who' the late Jacqueline Hill as Sgt. Maguire of the Metropolitan Police (sadly we never see her in uniform) infiltrates a Soho populated by low-lifes like spiv Ferdy Mayne (who has a vindictive high maintenance mistress amusingly played by Valerie White) and shady nightclub proprietor John LeMesurier. The latter shares the screen at one point with The Major from 'Fawlty Towers', back in the days when the police computer looks more like a loom than a machine for retrieving information.

This was one of several second features made by the technicians' union the ACT. From a story by Daily Express Crime Correspondent Percy Hoskins, it was to be one of the last films of director John Harlow, praised for some of his 1940's work, but whose career fizzled out. The Blue Parrot is a shady Soho nightclub of the type where a bottle of champagne with one of the hostesses can set you back £10.00, a lot of money in 1953. Then one of its disreputable clientèle is murdered.

This has all the classic ingredients of British thrillers of the time, including a nightclub with the inevitable Ferdy Mayne advising that "it's not healthy to ask too many questions in Soho" an avuncular but no-nonsense senior policeman (Ballard Berkeley) and his plucky undercover operative (Jacqueline Hill). Oh yes, and a tough American hero. Except it's not a real American but the usually dependable Dermot Walsh, who acts as if he's on speed for half of the time and is fairly ridiculous. It's hard to figure out his purpose, surely not a vain attempt to encourage distribution across the Atlantic, where his performance would only invite derision. By contrast Ballard Berkeley is a natural as the senior police officer which is why he played so many of them and Jacqueline Hill shows some of the intelligence and strength of character that she brought a decade later to her celebrated role as Barbara Wright in the early years of DOCTOR WHO. Then there's John Le Mesurier as the Blue Parrot's inscrutable proprietor who supposedly rides a high-powered motor bike; it's fun to imagine this most urbane of actors actually doing this. So not bad entertainment for fans of this kind of movie.

Direction by numbers doesn't help nor does an absence of shadow or flat focus. Aims at noir without the noir. The scene where the cast are madly winking across a 'sleazy' nightclub with no patrons and a band designed for earplugs is especially excruciating. Ballard Berkley and John LeMesurier try hard with a nuance free script and Ferdy Maine tries hard to look sinister. The film's origins with journalism are painfully obvious in a totally linear account; no sub plots, no character development, no humorous asides. The one joke is the name of the night club, 'The Blue Parrot' which is, of course, the name of Signor Ugatti's nightclub in Casablanca- maybe they should have borrowed the set designer, the extras, the scriptwriters from that film. A Sidney Greenstreet lookalike might have helped. Whole thing could have been phoned in.

British noir movies from the 40's and 50's are occasionally surprisingly very good given the fact that they were made on low budgets. This effort is rather poor. Even having just watched it I can't recall what it was all supposed to be about. A nice performance from John le Mesurier as the night club owner is the only reason to watch other than the nostalgia element of seeing actors of the period.

Victor Lucas has a lot of money for a glorified cab driver. When he's murdered and the safe he has in his flat is found to have been broken into and emptied, Scotland Yard, in the person of Ballard Berkeley investigates, with visiting Yankee copper Dermot Walsh (sporting one of those sourceless accents the British think American) goes undercover to investigate the seedy and customer-free Blue Parrot bar.

It's a pretty poor example of British crime drama, with Berkeley droning his lines, Walsh's accent variable, and pretty Jacqueline Hill as whatever the Brits call a b-girl. Shot flatly by cinematographer Robert Navarro, there's very little to recommend this bog-standard B movie. John Le Mesurier tries his best as the foreboding club owner, but it becomes apparent early on that figuring out what racket the bar is fronting for is the point of the movie, and by the time it was revealed, I didn't care.