Recently, I watched Shoot to Kill at a private screening after it showed up on Ebay in a 16mm print. The print was a dupe print from a very deteriorated master (either 16 or 35). The first two reels suffered from very heavy emulsion deterioration, creating what looked like white blobs on the right and left side of the frame. In addition, the deterioration in the second reel affected the soundtrack, making all the dialogue on that reel nearly unintelligible. Under these circumstances, I cannot give Shoot to Kill a rating. However, I will relay my thoughts on this rare film.
Shoot To Kill is a low-budget spy movie. It begins with reporter Mike Roberts (Dermot Walsh) being sent to Venice to cover a film festival. At the airport he makes nice with an actress who bares him a grudge. They make up, and all is well until their airplane crashes in stock footage that, I believe, was taken from Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
While recovering, the actress finds a blueprint and is immediately accosted by a foreign gentleman who says the blueprint is his. After exchanging words with Mike Roberts, the matter is settled. However, a piece of the blueprint had gotten torn and is found by Roberts later. Curious, Roberts ditches his film festival assignment and travels to Geneva to investigate.
What follows is a not overly thrilling espionage tale involving: plans for a new type of rocket, a scientist, his kidnapped daughter, and MI-5 using the reporter to do its dirty work for them. Along the way, Mike Roberts finds time to romance another correspondent (Joy Webster).
Shoot to Kill is an hour-long British B-Movie. It does not stand out in any way. The storytelling is awkward with none of the film festival/plane crash plot ever mentioned after the setting switches to Geneva. The actress character who seems at the beginning to be the film's leading lady disappears completely after the interaction with the foreign spy. The film's setting is Geneva, but I would guess that only a few pickup shots were filmed there, with most of the shooting being done in merry old England. The quick pace of the film shoot is shown by a lack of insert shots that would have clarified some details that are merely talked about in the dialogue. Finally, a viewer knows he is in trouble when the best scene in the movie (the airplane crash) is stock footage, even if admittedly the stock footage was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Shoot to Kill is remembered only because it was the feature film debut for both actress Lynn Redgrave and director Michael Winner. I am not certain who Lynn Redgrave played in the film. My guess is that she plays one of the airplane crash survivors. As for Michael Winner, he is a controversial figure. I have found some of his films well done (The Mechanic and Death Wish) and some of his other films entertaining as guilty pleasures (The Sentinel and Death Wish II and III). However, whatever flare for action Winner showed in the Charles Bronson films must have developed later.
I only sat through the lousy picture quality and the hard to hear (sometimes impossible to hear) dialogue because of the rarity of Shoot to Kill. While the film itself was not one of the worst I have ever seen, I kept thinking that if the Fates had blessed me to watch a film thought lost, why couldn't the film have been the complete Magnificent Ambersons or F. W. Murnau's The Four Devils, or the infamous Convention City.
