One Jump Ahead

A small boy playing at a ruined churchyard follows a mysterious woman into the bowels of the church. She opens a secret compartment behind a brick wall. As the boy secretly watches, she is struck down and murdered by a mystery man. The frightened boy flees and the killer chases after him. The boy escapes but loses his cap in the process. The killer picks up the cap, which has a boys name tag sewn in the underside.

The killer sets out to silence the only witness. But fate is on the young lad's side. He had switched caps with a friend and it is his friend who the killer has mistakenly hunted and murdered. A clever reporter (Paul Carpenter) pieces together the clues and comes to realize the boy who witnessed the crime is still alive.

This would be considered a low budget British mystery. I found it to be little above average and a quite enjoyable 65 minutes.

An innocent boy larking about near a spookily deserted church witnesses a murder, and then finds himself the very next victim of the callous, cold-hearted killer, desperate to cover their bloody tracks! Capable director Charles Saunders's limber, far-from lugubrious crime thriller is a tautly written, sprightly little British-made B-Picture with more than enough shadowy intrigue to blissfully envelop ardent thriller fans within its dark and desperate mysteries, and stalwart, quick-quipping, street savvy journalist Paul Banner (Paul Carpenter ) makes for an engaging, stoically sleuthing hero, one not only after the plaudits gleaned from breaking a major story, but morally driven to bring this nefarious, cold-hearted murderer to book. Charles Saunders's 'One Jump Ahead' remains an exciting yarn that always keeps it's dark secrets one jump ahead of the viewer, and I greatly enjoyed the knock-about scene with the charismatic hard nut Freddie Mills!

It's obvious why this British crime drama wasn't released in America - poor cast, poorer screenplay, and a final reel that is ridiculous on all levels. Even at just an hour of running time, the feature is padded with many scenes that go nowhere.

I was surprised at the favorable reviews in IMDb, given how little happens here. The bland hero played by Paul Carpenter (an unremarkable journeyman actor) gets beaten up twice -that's about all the action that occurs. His juggling two girlfriends is boring, and the low production values resemble a PRC or Monogram picture of a decade earlier.

I've enjoyed several exploitation movies directed by Charles Saunders, including "Womaneater" and "Nudist Paradise" and he made one classic film in 1944: "Tawny Pipit" (which I saw revived at MoMA -very highly recommended), but this one displays zero effort.

Paul Carpenter the Canadian actor who died early aged 42, appears here with another actor and ex-boxer who died early Freddy Mills, in another investigative role for his screen persona of Paul Banner, see also Behind the Headlines 1956.Whereas he is a reporter on The Daily Comet in One Jump Ahead, in the former film he is running his own news agency.Other reviewers have already explained the plot so I will confine myself to other matters.

Yes it was a mystery how Freddy Mills came to die with a shotgun by his side in a turning off Oxford Street in 1965 - a bigger mystery than this film!Was it suicide or a gangland killing?The cheeky schoolboy who appears at the beginning and barely escapes with his life, I remember seeing doing commercials on t.v. in the 1950s for Rowntrees Fruit Gums.As in Behind the Headlines with Hazel Court, Paul has a faithful and helpful British girlfriend who puts up with the rigours of his job.It was an adequate length of time approx 60 plus or so and would have constituted a B film back in the 1950s.It was an interesting enough film and I enjoyed seeing some old 1950s actors in British cast films again.I rated it 6/10.

The second of three crime quickies based on novels by Robert Chapman featuring roving reporter Banner; originally played by Peter Reynolds but in this and 'Behind the Headlines' (1956) by Paul Carpenter.

Despite it's fairly light-hearted tone, three people die (including a blackmailer and an eleven year-old witness). Although set in a relatively innocent Britain in which kids could still get into cars with strange men and the tenants in blocks of flats were prepared to display signs stating that they were not in, the underside of supposedly law-abiding post-war Britain is laid bare with its matter of fact depiction of adultery & blackmail (commonly seen in British films of this period on the understanding that it was usually sternly punished). Carpenter's dalliance with married Jill Adams doesn't prevent him from having the gorgeous Diane Hart in tow as his fiancée, though.