Landslide

In a small Welsh town, a theatre box-office cashier is murdered. When a landslide occurs, all the occupants find themselves trapped in the building with the murder among them and a potential for more victims.

A low budget murder mystery and disaster movie all in one, it says what it is on the tin, but not much more. With a better budget and director, it feels that more could have been done woth this film with potential.

That film preservation moves in mysterious ways shows in the pristine print of this incredibly obscure quota quickie aired in the small hours this morning on Talking Pictures. Even this is historically interesting, however, since it stars Jimmy Handley & Dinah Sheridan when they were just teenagers, five years before they married.

Donovan Pedelty's films were usually set in Ireland, but for a change this one's set in Wales (not that you'd know it from the accents of most of the cast, who are obviously as Welsh as the dance troupe they're members of, 'The Famous Orientals', are authentically Chinese).

Describing it as a mystery-thriller is already a spoiler, since for the first third of it's already short running time it seems more like a revue film (and includes a cod Victorian melodrama about a dastardly mine-owner called Jasper Johns, which I hope doesn't lead to any careless researchers claiming the nonegenarian pop artist was once a child actor).

Although people get murdered by a maniac and buried in a landslide (thirty years before Aberfan) nobody in the film seems particularly perturbed by either, and it all sounds far more dramatic that it actually is to watch. The climactic fracas when the killer is eventually almost casually unmasked is so ineptly staged it's fascinating.

LANDSLIDE is a murder mystery set in and around a natural disaster - a landslide which seals actors inside a Welsh theatre. Not only must the trapped survivors contend with the usual clichés of the disaster genre: a lack of oxygen, dwindling supplies, no hope of rescue - but there's also a murderer on the prowl, and he's one of their own.

Everything about LANDSLIDE screams quota quickie filler. It seems to have been written in a hurry with no real attention to facts or realism, and the repeated attempts at humour don't really play out very well. It's also rather obviously a low budget production, but I was surprised at the effectiveness of the landslide scenes, which are well staged.

The murder mystery stuff is less effective given that the identity of the murderer is obvious from the very early scenes. There's also a lot of over the top acting on display here, with various characters displaying larger than life mannerisms and others given over to hysterical laughter. Still, the film is notable for featuring the double pairing of the young Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan, two actors who would go on to marry five years later.

A landslide hits a small Welsh theatre and traps the actors and employees who work there. A murder is soon discovered added even more tension to the situation. This is truly a Quickie Quota picture. Donovan Pedelty wrote and directed this low budget thriller. It is very stage bound. I know the film's setting is a theatre but there is little action. The sets are not very good, especially the landslide scenes which are not convincing. The characters are a little too one dimensional. Jimmy Hanley is the true blue leading man. Dinah Sheridan is the too cheerful leading lady. Everyone else is a little too clichéd for my liking.

I know I seem to be complaining but I did enjoy the film. It is a very rare film that I have never seen listed anywhere before I purchased it. The 1930's British films have a unique charm all their own. I am quite delighted it has been made available for viewing even if it is not a great film.

A quota quickie, notable for an early pairing of later real life partners Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan in the lead; their likable performances being one of the few assets. Donovan Pedelty was one of the few quickie producers to include settings outside the home counties, often in Ireland, and in this case Wales. That is the only distinction however, and like so many others of its type it is overburdened with a surfeit of dialogue. The direction of the actors is flat; and despite the classic situation of a killer at large among an isolated group, followed by the landslide (the one element that is at all convincing) very little tension is generated amid the constant prattle, shouting and hysterics. Ben Williams, who played bit parts in innumerable British films for decades, is given a decent role and proves to be one of the better performers while Bruno Barnabe, often cast as oily Middle Eastern types, is a creepy stage hand with an alarming hairpiece.