`Penny & the Pownall Case' runs barely 45 minutes yet when it ended I felt that I had watched a feature film if only because of the glimpses we are afforded of life in that long-ago post-war England.
For instance when Penny is asked to fill in a form she responds `You're worse than the Food Office', a reference to rationing of groceries prevalent then. And a comment on the weather brings the response ` We've only just begun Double Summer Time, its still winter'
Interesting to see brunette Diana Dors in a secondary part. She was plump and mousy then but was there a spark of Britain's first blonde bombshell or is it just the benefit of hindsight?
And an alarmingly youthful but unmistakably Saturnine Christopher Lee was already typecast as a villain.
The plot concerns fleeing Nazi war criminals and a newspaper comic strip obviously based on the Daily Mirror's famous scantily clad `Jane'
Made at Highbury Studio on a rationed budget `Penny...' is at the most a dated curiosity.
