User reviews

In the days of the cold war, many films and TV series were based on the themes of espionage and mysterious disappearances. It was unsurprising that second-feature specialists Butcher's would produce one in this genre.

However, this is well-plotted and genuinely suspenseful in parts, with a good twist in the tail. If the low budget is obvious in the production values, the acting is solid, especially Vincent Ball as the journalist who is more than he appears and Betty MacDowall in her specialist rôle as the grieving widow.

Dermott Walsh has disappeared. His wife, Betty McDowall, believes his private plane has gone down, and him with it. Then the radio announces that authorities believe they have found the crashed plane near the Turkish border, and her friend, Clare Owen, points out a notice in the personal ads of a paper: "In Memoriam, Philip Scott (Walsh), killed in an air crash June 4; Fondest love. No regrets. Diana."

Miss McDowall is called into Scotland Yard, where Geoffrey Toone tells her there are spy matters going on. At that point, things become confused.

It's a nice little mystery wrapped in a spy thriller, with mysterious spy rings and no one to trust. It's a cheap little thriller, but the actors speak their lines as if they mean them and there's no clear answer to whodunnit until the big reveal at the end. Not bad at all.

A cheap British spy effort from those hard-working fellows at Butcher's Film Service, ECHO OF DIANA offers something a little different for fans of the genre. For a start, it's not a film with a clear-cut plot; most of this one takes the form of a mystery that slowly unravels over the hour-long running time. It's an intriguing little thing in places, following a wife's determination to solve the mysteries surrounding her husband's death in a plane crash in Turkey.

A friend and reporter help her to uncover the truth about what happened, and the authorities also take a keen interest. However, there's also a murderous kidnap gang at work, and each of these factions works against the other as the running time unfolds. Part detection, part kidnap thriller, part hostage drama; ECHO OF DIANA is always sedate and a little genteel, but it kept me watching from beginning to end, which is more than can be said for some.

Australian actress Betty McDowall is the erstwhile lead and pretty good with it too; her character grows on you and she evokes sympathy as the storyline progresses. The casting director had an eye for talent with lots of good little roles for the likes of Geoffrey Toone, a funny Michael Balfour, a quirky Marianne Stone, and even a pivotal cameo from Dermot Walsh. Director Ernest Morris made this back-to-back with SHADOW OF FEAR and it's by far the superior of the two films.

A British agent called Philip Scott is killed in a plane crash near the Turkish border. His wife Joan (Betty McDowall) is concerned by a memoriam in the newspaper signed by a mysterious woman known simply as Diana but no trace can be found of her. She is helped by journalists Pamela Jennings (Clare Owen) and Bill Vernon (Vincent Ball) who is keen to do a series of articles on Scott claiming that he knew him during the war. The pair have both had their flats ransacked and are summoned by security chief Colonel Justin (Geoffrey Toone) who believes that both jobs were perpetrated by a double agent called Harris who is some how connected in the Philip Scott case. Later Joan is approached by the head of an Eastern embassy, Kavali (Peter Illing), who informs her that her husband is alive but has defected to the East. He says that if she wants to be reunited with her husband arrangements will be made to get her out of the country to which she agrees but is all as it seems?

A modest but better than you would expect spy drama from quota quickie specialists, Butcher's Film Distributors, who seem to be enjoying some resurgence of interest in their prolific output of low budget programmers as many of them including this one are finding their way on to DVD. Reginald Hearne's script is at times confusing but for once there is some suspense to be had as Betty McDowall's distraught wife seems to be going along with the enemy agents to join her husband who has allegedly defected. The story is kept moving at a good pace by director Ernest Morris whose career was almost exclusively in b-movies and he is helped a lot by Walter J Harvey's atmospheric black and white camera-work. The acting especially from McDowall and Vincent Ball is good all round.

Like most Cold War thrillers the plot is largely incomprehensible. But like most British 'B' movies of the early sixties it doesn't really matter as one savours the cool black & white photography, old cars and buttoned-down Jackie Kennedy-style elegance of Betty McDowall and Clare Owen as the ladies caught up in a rather dream-like web of intrigue (which even requires the former to go beguilingly blonde at one point). Plus an even more than usually weird little cameo from Marianne Stone in glasses like bottle bottoms.

It's all oddly haunting to experience; aided by a guitar & bongo drums score by Martin Slavin more suited to a film set on the Mediterranean and seldom paying much attention to what's actually going on but which lingers on when the film is over...

Given the demand for spy films generated by the success of the James Bond films Butchers decided to have a go.However they did it with a tiny budget and a plot that would be enough for a film 2 hours long.I watched this twice and i have to confess that i still did not understand the twists and turns in the second half of the film,with a shoal of red herrings swimming around.There just seemed to me to be a large number of incidents that were unexplained.The film was competently acted and directed and the whole thing rattled along at a fair pace.However once you have partly lost the thread in this sort of film you are completely lost

'Echo of Diana' is one of those British B-Movies that does exactly what one expects... Entertains, with mystery and suspense.. Typically cast with those 50s-60s b list actors, that deliver to the best of their talent... Actress Betty Mcdowell, is a dead ringer for the actress Jane Griffiths... I completely get them mixed up, they're almost like twin sisters..... Dermot Walsh pops up towards the end...

I recommend this enjoyable mystery on a Sunday afternoon:).

Having seen this 60s black & white crime drama quite a few times now, I find It' still enjoyable to watch whenever aired on 'Talking Tv'. Nostalgia eat your heart out.! British 50s/60s B-movie-crime genre, I recommend you watch them, as they're always entertaining with a great, (mostly underrated) cast. Having a large collection of this genre recorded now, Sunday afternoons seem to be mostly spent catching up viewing them all...:) Nostalgia & loving memories again come to mind... family, and my own upbringing in the 60s seem very close to my Mothers generation growing up during the war and experiencing the 50s as portrayed in these classic 50s-60s Classic British fashionable movies.. A hearty Memorable nod to our past...!

Kind of surprised at the 5.5 rating. It's definitely not. It's a simple story but with some interesting twists and turns. The acting is very good and at no time did I disbelieve what was going on. At the time of writing (2023) the lead actor is still alive, about to turn 100 this December. The others have all long since passed. As a Canadian I get to see many British movies here in Austria by watching a British channel on my TV courtesy of my giant satellite dish capable of capturing faint signals from abroad. This film was above the average of the ones I've seen over the years and enjoyed the way it ended.

This is a rare film from a lost British company form the fifties and specialized in small crime thrillers. This one brings nothing at all. It is talkative, boring, bland at the most but worth seeing if you are lucky enough to purchase it.

This is quite an enthralling little low budget British thriller as "Joan" (Betty McDowell) starts to investigate the suspicious death of her husband in a plane crash on the Turkish border. Was he a spy? We set out to discover with the help of journalists "Pam" (Clare Owen) and "Bill" (Vincent Ball) what exactly happened - is he actually dead? Ernest Morris was an old hand at keeping these moving along a-pace and does so adequately here, too, with plenty of double-crosses to keep it interesting. The jungle-drums music is of the time, and no less annoying for that - it is no substitute for taut writing.