Urge to Kill

While it would be fair to say that a great many Edgar Wallace mysteries aren't all that mysterious, quite a number are too formulaic to prove viable as gripping entertainment today, but most prove to be entirely watchable whodunnit's, and in spine-chilling serial killer thriller 'Urge to Kill, a sadistic, black-hearted, nattily white-gloved killer is sinisterly stalking the doomy, crepuscular city streets, a twitchy, murderous psychopath with a perverse yen for pitilessly strangling, and murderously slashing women to death! Sewell's gritty thriller is an adequate time-waster, competently written, well-acted by a solid cast, and experienced director director Vernon Sewell tautly executes a lean, frequently tense B-thriller that credibly maintains interest right until the sinister climax. The prolific Edgar Wallace's teasingly twist-headed, menacingly be-gloved maniac being a clear precursor to the sexier, black-leathered variety so garishly fetishized in the Italian Giallo of the 60s and 70s, and I genuinely found the darkly fascinating 'Urge to Kill' to be one of the more superior Edgar Wallace crime thrillers.