The Hornet's Nest

Paul Carpenter, once described by Sean Connery as the funniest person he'd ever worked with, gets a rare opportunity to play comedy onscreen in this long-forgotten potboiler. Summarily dismissed by Chibnall & McFarlane as "a comedy-thriller bereft of laughs or excitement", it's actually quite likeable (despite Wilfred Burns's gallumphing score), and anticipates Ealing's classic of the same year 'The Ladykillers'.

In 'The Ladykillers', however, Mrs Lopsided remains sublimely obvious to the activities of those about her while old biddies Nora Nicholson & Christine Silver miss nothing.

Worth mentioning is a young Jan Holden as the cynical-looking secretary for the Society for the Reformation of Unfortunates; working under a sign reading 'Honesty is the Best Policy'.

"The Hornet's Nest" is the name of the barge, but it also refers to the trouble these young people inadvertently get themselves into. Coming in at just over an hour, this Brit flick can't be blamed if its charms are principally on the surface. There's an "Arsenic and Old Lace" vibe with the lovely elderly ladies watching everything from their windows, and just a hint of that kooky, beatnik ethos of the 50s in the dialog and in those Les Paul guitar licks commenting on the action. Some threads get introduced but never seem to go anywhere (I kept waiting for one of the girls to trot out a nice dinner), but mostly the plot runs fairly linearly from one end to the other. Pleasant writing of not quite memorable lines, competent if not earth-shaking, as repartee goes. You won't hate yourself in the morning for watching this, but it ain't no ten.

A gang of criminals hide a bag of jewels onboard an empty barge. The story follows the happenings of the local community & what happens when two models move onto the barge, helped by a local salvage operator. Much of the action is seen from the upstairs room of a pair of old ladies who view the action as quite exciting in their normally quiet neighbourhood.

This film was made as a support feature by Guido Coen at Twickenham studios.It is an amusing film with lots of familiar faces.Alexander Gauge just before he found fame as Friar Tuck.Paul Carpenter and June Thorburn,both playing leads in B features,who both sadly died young.Charles Starrett as the horizontal heavyweight.

...but sufficiently amusing if you like British comedies from the '50s.

A thief hides his loot in an old barge while two nosy old ladies watch from their window. Plot complications ensue when he tries to retrieve the loot later on in the West-End section of London. The bungled attempts of the burglars provide mild amusement.

The story also includes a junk dealer who arranges for two girls to rent the barge when they're looking for an apartment to share. What they don't know is that the loot (twenty-thousand pounds worth of jewelry) is hidden beneath the floor boards on the barge.

It's played in good farcical fashion and the laughs are deserved because they're not hammered home as they sometimes are in these kind of British comedies. The players are all unfamiliar to me, but they do well to sustain the frantic pace of the slim story.

Summing up: Nothing special, but guaranteed to amuse.