User reviews

Would-be scientist Douglass Montgomery (Jim) teams up with salesman Ronald Shiner (Dan) to rid tourists in Blackpool of their money by selling medicine that re-grows your hair amongst other things. On a nearby stall, Hazel Court (Jane) has the hots for Montgomery, and they soon embark on an affair. Naughty Douglass – he's married to Patricia Burke (Diana). However, she is more interested in pursuing her acting career and is prepared to sleep her way onto the casting couch, her current favourite being Garry Marsh (Jerry). Montgomery wants a divorce but Burke won't give him one and so he hatches a plan to bump her off. He interferes with her own daily medicine and finds her dead. He then buries her in his studio and now he's really in trouble. The story is told in flashback before we end the film with a chase and fight on Blackpool Tower.

I like this film. Uk films are pretty good from this time, providing they are not comedies. The best in the cast is Patricia Burke. She excels as a bitch and it's a shame that she is killed off so early. There are several funny moments as demonstrated by Burke's self-assured nastiness. The scene where she visits Court is a classic as is the way she lets Montgomery know that she's going off to stay with a relative yet blatantly has her current beau escort her into a cab. And then presents Montgomery with the bill for her new change of clothes as she departs. A very wicked woman! And there are tense moments including the fight at the finale between Montgomery and love-rival Kenneth Griffith (Johnny). The scene is finished in an unexpected but refreshing way that demonstrates how to conduct oneself in a potential death situation. Jolly good manners all round.

It's nice to see the Blackpool Tower, which the French obviously copied to make their own version – the Trifle Tower or something like that. Not a patch on Blackpool. I could imagine Michael Redgrave and Googie Withers playing the husband and wife team – they looked a bit similar to Montgomery and Burke – but Montgomery and especially Burke do justice to their roles. I'm not sure why Montgomery didn't just tell Hazel Court that he was married and I'm not sure where the title comes from, but it's an enjoyable film.

The similarities to the celebrated 1948 film Brighton Rock could hardly be coincidental - set in that other big seaside holiday town, Blackpool, with the gang of young spivs and hoodlums centered in a funfair rather than horse racing. with a young Kenneth Griffith as a Pinkie figure. Even the same actor playing the identical gang member in both films. But whereas the storyline and script were so tight in Brighton Rock, here in Forbidden they are so sloppy. Mixing Ronald Shiners comic persona with film noir elements is just plain odd. not merely unsuccessful. Whereas the Brighton in Brighton Rock was a very hard place. Forbidden is a strange mixture of sugar and dog's dinner. Douglas Montgomery was an odd actor - half ineffectual sap, half leading man. Here the script perfect;y serves him - half sap, half hero - unfortunately. It is a mess.

The last film of both director George King and star Douglass Montgomery (both of whom coincidentally died in 1966) is a dark melodrama typical of postwar austerity Britain with a decidedly continental feel in which romance beckons with nice Hazel Court, but Montgomery is already shackled to faithless high maintainance wife Patricia Burke.

Peopled with denizens of the spiv economy like Ronald Shiner and a lean, zoot-suited young Kenneth Griffith packing a flick-knife; it could easily be French, or a German silent, and even looks like one courtesy of Hone Glendinning's usual atmospheric photography and the production design by Bernard Robinson, who later found steady employment with Hammer Films.