Dilemma

Off-Beat Black Comedy that Plays Like an Episode of Boris Karloff's "Thriller" TV Show.

In Fact it Looks TV, Sounds TV, and Ultimately, Ironically that was the Format where the Brits had to Settle.

It was a Time when the British Film Industry was Phasing Out this Type of Thing,

with its Ultra-Low-Budget and Smallish Appeal on the Big-Screen.

So this Well-Written and Played Little Gem did Not get Distributed and Languished in Limbo for Years.

Above Average, Highly-Entertaining and Snappy Thriller.

It also Reminds of those "E. C." Pre-Code Comics that had Mothers and Senators in a Tizzy.

The Plot is "Hide-the-Body" Against All Odds.

Because the Living Room is Not the Ideal Graveyard.

Although it did Become One for Serial-Killer and Kids Party Clown John Wayne Gacy.

Remove the Floor-Boards, Add a Bag of Cement,

and Try to Avoid those Suburban Nuisances Like Nosy-Neighbors, Nuns with Collection Plates, Uninvited Doting Mom, and the Ever-Present Local Police.

The Door-Bell gets a Work-Out at just the Wrong Time and the Thing Escalates the Suspense and Frustration Factor for the One-Hour Running Time.

It Ends with a Twist, Fitting for 1962, the Era of the Dance-Craze.

This is Adult Entertainment for the Main-Stream.

What would you do if you came home to find your beautiful, rich wife, Ingrid Hafner missing -- the snoopy lady next door says she heard a scream and ran out earlier -- and a dead man on the floor of the bath room> If you're Peter Halliday, about to go off on holiday with your wife, you get concrete and bury him beneath the floorboards, of course. That is, if you can get past the constant interruptions: Patricia Burke with cups of tea, nuns collecting for missionaries, mother Joan Heath showing up to slang the wife, and so forth. It's a very funny movie that distracts the viewer from wondering what the dead man is doing there.

Pip and Jane Baker disavowed the script, saying it wasn't anything like what they handed in. I think they made a mistake.

Dilemma came on Channel 5 some time ago and I was pleased I taped it. It is quite an obscure movie.

A school teacher returns home from work and finds the dead body of a man in the bathroom. He doesn't know how it got there. His wife is missing as well, so there could be some connection here. He wraps the body with the shower curtain and takes it downstairs where he eventually digs up the floorboards in the living room. He keeps getting interrupted though, by a nosey neighbour, a blind piano tuner and a young boy who has come for his weekly piano lesson. He buries the corpse eventually and puts the floorboards back. His wife then arrives. What does she Know?

This is quite a good little movie and the nosey neighbour is a typical occurrence in the UK. There are some where I live. The piano tuner being blind is a little far fetched though.

Look out for Dilemma on TV listings. Not bad at all.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

I really liked this unusually-plotted British thriller, which is full to the brim of suspense and black comedy which really makes it work. It's one of those 'hide the corpse' type tales (the South Korean effort A HARD DAY was similar but far more elaborate) with a distinctly British slant to it. Peter Halliday plays an ordinary husband who makes a living as a music teacher. He returns to his home in the suburbs one day to find his wife missing and a bloodied corpse in the bathroom. What better way to resolve the situation than to bury the corpse under his living room floor?

That's the plot in a nutshell, but the surprisingly humorous execution is what makes this really work. Halliday is a delight as the increasingly stressed out protagonist, and I was delighted by the typically English way he keeps getting interrupted in his work by all sorts of people, particularly Patricia Burke's nosy neighbour. The eventual solving of the mystery is a little ahead of its time (I don't remember cocaine being utilised in British films too much during this time) but it's the execution that makes this little film shine.

Cheapo British B-picture which does not live up to its description. The initial premise is interesting enough, but any "thrills" are dissipated by the slack plotting. The "surprise" ending is signalled well before the end.