The Man in the Road

As a mystery thriller the intrigue is not bad but rather fantastic and incredible, a little bit too overdone in complexity to be convincing, but the Russians actually worked along such lines in the cold war, using all kinds of brainwash techniques including hypnosis. It's all about hypnosis here, the victim wakes up without a memory and is more or less coerced into accepting an alien half Russian identity which he is sure isn't his real one, but he can't find his real one, because his brains have been tampered with.

Cyril Cusack makes an important contribution here as another patient, a doctor persuaded to cooperate with the kidnapping league bribed by unlimited access to whisky, which he accepts since he is a failed doctor and an alcoholic, and he works constantly on getting too tipsy to be able to regret it. The scenes with him and with Ella Raines are the best and most interesting in the film, although Donald Wolfit, as always, impresses with his acting, this time as the overbearing professor, who even one of his doctors finally has some objection against.

It's not a great thriller but interesting as an entertainment, and you will remember Cyril Cusack and Ella Raines better than Derek Farr.