Blonde Bait

Another Hammer movie watched to go with the "House of Hammer" Podcast and after a few welcome weeks of otherworldly horror, we're back with a noiry crime thriller. I usually write my reviews a few days after watching the film, so as an aide memoire I usually make a couple of little notes. Here I've just written down one word, in big letters, "BORING".

Angie Booth (Beverly Michaels) a lounge room singer of some renown, plans to marry her shady boyfriend Nick (Paul Carpenter) on New Years Eve. With Nick out of the country, Angie is imprisoned for an assault on her murderous club promotor and will miss the arranged date. However, the British and American authorities are aware of the planned nuptials and, using an informant, 'Granny' (Thora Hird), try to organise a Prison break, so Angie can lead them to Nick.

Despite not one, but two, salacious titles, the version of this film I saw on Youtube was catastrophically dull. There appears to be two very different versions of the film, with "Blonde Bait" recasting Nick and adding new actors and scenes, I think I was watching the original though.

The women's prison seems remarkably clean and organised and there's not much antagonism going on between the staff and convicts. Some of the other prisoners have an impact on the story. Marguerite, played by April Olrich, has had a baby that will be taken from her and put up for adoption soon, as the rules of prison dictate and so joins the escape and bigamist Babs (Sheila Burrell) who has married twice and is released before the escape takes place. There are a couple of recognisable actors in this, recognisable to me anyway. One is Thora Hird, who is playing a character called Granny in 1956, it's almost incomprehensible that she'd still be playing elderly characters on TV fifty years later, she's great though. Gordon Jackson is also in the film too.

What should be an interesting thriller, about a state mandated prison escape leading to the capture of a wanted felon gets hopelessly lost in the mundanity of the second act, so much so that I can't even recall the specifics of if they catch Nick at the end. It's not surprising that a new ending was created for "Blonde Bait" as this one is very underwhelming.

This feels like a step backwards for Hammer, after the horror successes of the last couple of films and I'm glad it doesn't appear to last too long.