B films from the 1950's, and here I am concentrating on the UK, are a particularly interesting way of discovering long forgotten memories of how this island country lived. The format of these films, but not always, concentrate on crime and inevitably punishment. It is an old cliche that is debatably true that old French films from the same period regarded sex as being important, but not so in the UK. Violence it seems has always been more important to Britain than sexuality and whereas in France details concentrate on the passions of the body, in this emerald isle details of inanimate things, however trivial, take its place. I learnt in this film made by Brighton Studios and directed by Terence Fisher, the prices of admission to theatres, and minute details of mock Tudor houses and their cluttered interiors. As social history this is fascinating and that is why I like watching these films, good or badly made. Terence Fisher before he drained the mystery out of Dracula and Frankenstein, replete with gaudy colour, extreme violence for the time and hardly any atmosphere at all, made B movies. ' The Flaw ' has a nasty crime scene with no detail spared, and an ending that I could see a mile off. The fascination of the agony of being murdered or dying brutally no doubt made Fisher the ideal man to become a lead Hammer Horror vivisector of the Gothic. As for the story in ' The Flaw ' a young woman marries a very bad man played rather boringly by John Bentley and her life is endangered. Fortunately she has a faithful ex-boyfriend played well by Donald Houston at hand and the rest of the story I will not spoil. For those who live in or near Brighton there are very good shots of Shoreham Harbour and its lighthouse. Detail again, but B movies are worth seeing just to appreciate them. Worth seeing, but as I said there is an unpleasant gloating over dying in the middle which the camera thoroughly enjoyed. A 5 for details of every facet of 1950's life except of course for sex.
