Landslide

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 landslide hits a small Welsh theatre and traps the actors and employees who work there. A murder is soon discovered added even more tension to the situation. This is truly a Quickie Quota picture. Donovan Pedelty wrote and directed this low budget thriller. It is very stage bound. I know the film's setting is a theatre but there is little action. The sets are not very good, especially the landslide scenes which are not convincing. The characters are a little too one dimensional. Jimmy Hanley is the true blue leading man. Dinah Sheridan is the too cheerful leading lady. Everyone else is a little too clichéd for my liking.

I know I seem to be complaining but I did enjoy the film. It is a very rare film that I have never seen listed anywhere before I purchased it. The 1930's British films have a unique charm all their own. I am quite delighted it has been made available for viewing even if it is not a great film.

"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.

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.

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.