Dead Man's Evidence

This is a peculiar thriller which will lead you the wrong way all along. A dead man is washed ashore on the coast of Ireland, and Conrad Phillips is sent over to establish if it is the spy long since believed dead who now really is dead or not. The corpse is too unidentifiable for anyone to be able to identify, but for the case of a ring found on his hand which then is missing. The girl who found the body denies having seen any ring, but then she is upset by finding it has been stolen from her. All these winding threads leading away from the mystery - we actually never learn who the dead man was - serve only to mystify and mislead the audience from any possibility to get on the right track, and Conrad Phillips is most misled of all. There is a conclusion which will take everyone by surprise including Conrad Phillips.

Mainly filmed on location in Ireland, where one car a day passes the pub, if you're lucky.

Baxter is sent by his bosses to investigate a dead frogman washed up on the beach. It was found by a young girl, Miss Howard (what was she doing there?), and a reporter and photographer just happened to be on the spot. There's a mysterious beardie in a bungalow who's employing the (female) photographer as a fellow spy. Is the dead man a double agent last seen in Berlin? Baxter and Miss Howard stay in the same rather staid hotel in the nearest town as they wait for the inquest. The reporter and photographer hang around, ostensibly on the scent of a story.

1963 wasn't a great year for fashion, and all the women wear frumpy styles, big coats and awful hairdos. Staff at the hotel and airport have very English accents. The only "Oirish" is attempted by a barmaid and the mortuary attendant. Everybody smokes all the time, and drinks all day. Miss Howard becomes a bit giggly after her tenth gin and bitter lemon.

The sound was so bad that I turned on the subtitles. Miss Howard in particular EMphasized one word in every sentence but died away for the rest. The subtitler gave up on an Irish barman in a lonely pub where the last showdown takes place. We shall never know what he was saying. However, we are helpfully told when the soundtrack becomes sinister, menacing or resolutive.

Overall, it is like a substandard Francis Durbridge enacted by the Charles Vance players (the worst amateur troupe I have ever witnessed). The music is the best thing about this dreary movie - with a few genuinely lovely Irish folk tunes at the beginning.

The complain I hear most about old movies is the "slow pace" . The audience was conditions over the last decades to faster and faster action, cuts lasting a fraction of a second, jumps from scene to scene that can make one nauseous. But nothing like this happens in real life and a more pedestrian pace is not only more realistic, but much more rewarding.

So if we ignore the "slow pace" we have here a good solid story slowly reaching its solution. And really everything is going in favour of the movie: good acting, good photography, authentic locations. And like any movie from some 60 years ago, it is an interesting document, a time capsule with the real objects (not fake props), the real customs and details. We usually do not see this in the anachronistic period movies made decades later.

From the very first image of the classic British binoculars, the WW2 Bar & Stroud Cf41, to the scenes of the Dublin airport with the Vickers Viscount airplanes - it is all as authentic as it can be for the early 1960s.

Dean Man's Evidence brings with it a fairly broad cast of performers that have the misfortune of having to work with a rather bland and uninspiring script.

The film's location takes place in Ireland and the cinematography does offer the viewer some beautiful vistas that are quite lovely. Even with a weak script the two male leads are unable to elevate the action as they both turn in rather tepid performances. In addition to the beautiful scenery this film does also include some unique locations as well. However, there is far too little in the way of suspense on display in Dead Man's Evidence that would suggest this as a must see.

Conrad Philips plays the secret agent trying to uncover the reason for the murder of a British spy who's been washed up on a beach near Dublin. Phillips is an uninspiring lead, and like the rest of the cast simply goes through the motions without expending too much energy. The film is far too heavily laden with tedious and polite dialogue, accompanied by a prodigious amount of smoking and drinking in hotels and bars. The lack of action and a convincing dramatic narrative means the film wanders aimlessly from scene to scene with one dimensional characters, who seem to drift in and out without rhyme or reason. The only compensations are the picturesque views of the beaches and the coastal surroundings. This is strictly a low grade 'B' film and a time filler before the main feature.