Testigo presencial

A frequently incoherent but extremely well photographed drama in which tall dark Maxwell Reed, having demonstrated how ruthless a killer he is despatching his first two victims then makes a complete pig's ear of silencing Natasha Parry, who happened to be cycling past just after the second murder.

Many of the plot contrivances (including a very perfunctorily engineered romance between Miss Parry and the rather elderly looking detective played by Edward Underdown) and character vignettes by the likes of Barbara Murray and William Hartnell seem thrown in just as filler between cameraman Eric Cross's vivid noirish night scenes and enterprising use of the South Coast in bright sunshine to surprisingly sinister effect that anticipates 'And Soon the Darkness' nearly twenty years later.

A terrific British B movie of the period! One of the filming locations listed is Camber Sands, but the denouement takes place at Dungeness where the Lighthouse and the Railway Station of the Hythe/Romney and Dymchurch Narrow Gauge Railway feature strongly - the line swings around the Dungeness terminus and can be seen quite clearly.

You can punch a lot of holes in this one.

From 1951, The Dark Man, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, stars (and is) Maxwell Reed. He was Joan Collins' first husband, and ever since I heard what she said about him, I've never been able to stand him. Good thing he always plays creeps.

In this film, on a lonely road, he (Dark Man) kills a cab driver who could recognize him (his second murder that we know about). A young actress, Molly Lester (Natasha Perry) out on her bike hears the shot and sees him in the distance.

When a fellow thespian reads that the police are looking for witnesses, a reluctant Molly tells an officer (Edward Underdown) what she knows, and he informs her that her life is in danger. She will have to be guarded. There's a romantic interest, though he's 43 and she's 21.

Well, when you're being guarded, that means all the time, one would think. In Molly's case, I guess it's when they get around to it. At one point, Dark Man breaks into her apartment, removes the lightbulbs, and attacks her.

The guy has killed twice. Does he kill her? No. He turns on the gas. She lives.

Okay, then he picks her up in a cab. He wants to kill her because she may recognize him. Obviously she doesn't know who the heck he is or why he is heading out to a remote place.

It's well photographed, keeping Dark Man tall and in the dark. I wouldn't have recognized him either.

Actress Natasha Parry is bicycling on the road when she hears a couple of shots, and sees a dark man emerge from the woods to stand by a standing auto. She thinks nothing of it, but in the dressing room that night, her fellow actress tells her the police are looking for witnesses. Miss Parry says she saw nothing useful, but her friend points out that it's always useful for an actress to get her name in the papers. Miss Parry reports the very little she knows to the police, and thinks that will be the end of it... until Superintendent of Police William Hartnell sees the item. With the unknown man having committed two murders, he thinks she's in for it, so he sends down Detective Inspector Edward Underdown to guard her, and possibly catch the dark man before he can kill her.

It's a handsomely shot movie, directed and written by Jeffrey Dell, with an intelligently plausible arc of action that ends in a chase across the seashore in the darkling. It's photographed in long takes by Eric Cross; the lengthening shadows convert a taut policier into a shadowy noir at the end.

Poor old "Molly" (Natasha Parry) has the misfortune to witness the eponymous character commit double murder. He knows she knows, and she knows he knows that she does, and so now he (Maxwell Reed) is determined to shut her up before she can tell pursuing police inspector "Vine" (Edward Underdown) and he faces the gallows. There's no real jeopardy here - we all know who did what to whom, but it's still quite an engaging little cat and mouse thriller that, though it could certainly do with losing twenty minutes or so, has a strong supporting cast and some nice photography of England's Sussex coast as the adventure hots up to an exciting, if predictable, denouement. The acting and script are all pretty generic, but it's still worth a watch.