The Black Rider

This sturdy British B-picture features a plot right out of Enid Blyton or Scooby-Doo. A gang of crooks, bent on smuggling "atomic sabotage equipment" into the country (crumbs!), are using the legend of the Black Rider to scare people away from crumbling Brocken Castle, where they have a secret headquarters in the dungeons. Gosh!

The film is best enjoyed for its view of the vanished innocence of 50s Britain. This is a place where smiling librarians select handpicked novels for little old ladies, where the teapot is always full, where the harmless village drunk (Kenneth Connor) is plied with booze by indulgent locals and where the local youths are too busy fixing their motorbikes to bother with vandalising the bus shelter. No Hells Angels these - they are all clean-cut and impeccably polite, trundling along the leafy lanes at a sedate 25 mph or participating in motorised egg-and-spoon races at the village fete.

Jimmy Hanley and Rona Anderson make a charming hero and heroine, Lionel Jeffries is good as the urbane villain and there' s a jolly, infuriatingly catchy theme tune. Nobody gets killed and even Hanley's irascible employer and future father-in-law turns out to be a decent cove at the end, even buying his own motorcycle and sidecar combination for some exhilarating spins with the missus. Somehow I doubt if Quentin Tarantino will be doing a remake.

If you remove the thought that Jimmy Hanley is the British Marlon Brando in this biker movie made around the same time as the classic 'The Wild One', then you might enjoy this laid-back tale of smugglers, deceit, dads, and dark pubs.

Jerry (Hanley) is a reporter who rides a motorbike despite the disapproval of his parents - the fact that he seems rather elderly is neither here nor there! There's a girlfriend, a local legend of a ghost, and a nice comic turn from a young Kenneth Connor.

The local rich chappie and maybe villain of the piece is Lionel Jeffries, in a reliable performance. Hanley himself is adequate but perhaps an actor like Albert Finney would have been so much more interesting as Jerry. However, 'The Black Rider' is a good wheeze and a decent little B movie.

A trifle of a film but not without interesting deserts. The story is about smuggling, but no one has any idea of what is being smuggled or by whom and for what, while gradually Lionel Jeffries (later known from many Peter Sellers comedies) emerges as the leading villain. It is an idyllic and cozy film from a small town and its quiet life, while the plot gradually emerges as more and more intriguing in assuming impressive dimensions. It is great entertainment with a finale of some suspense, but it's certainly not a great film, but it will do for a change, if you need someting totally different.

Riding motorcycles (as they're called here) is one of the bad habits Jimmy Hanley picked up in the army as a dispatch rider at Normandy. Postwar as a member of the Swanhaven Motorcycling Club he tears along the South Coast (attractively shot both by day and by night by veteran cameraman Geoffrey Faithfull) with foxy librarian Rona Anderson on his pillion in the face of initial criticism from her father that they're just "nasty, noisy, clattering bags of machinery" until his path crosses that of 'The Black Monk', played with an Italian accent by veteran voice man Robert Rietty.

SPOILER COMING: As in countless Children's Film Foundation productions and episodes of 'Scooby Doo' the phantom turns out to be a courier for a bunch of smugglers, this time led by Lionel Jeffries (on this occasion the 'MacGuffin' being components for "an atomic sabotage weapon"). All at just 66 minutes and carrying a 'U' certificate; with a jaunty saxophone and guitar score by Wilfred Burns that will stay in your head long after you've forgotten the rest of the film.

Jimmy Hanley is a young (?) reporter on the local paper, a motorcycling enthusiast, and in love with his publisher/editor's daughter, Rona Anderson. When strange doings are reported at the ruined castle, raising old myths of a "Black Rider" used in old days to cover smuggling, it becomes clear that someone is smuggling something. But what?

It's an enjoyable little newspaper thriller, even if 35-year-old Mr. Hanley is getting a little old to play a youngster any more. It's not an expensive movie, but old-time cameraman Geoffrey Faithfull shoots the scenes efficiently, and the professional cast, including Leslie Dwyer and Lionel Jeffries certainly earn their paychecks under the direction of Wolf Rilla.