A Man on the Beach

Losey's first film for Hammer was a half-hour crime film by Hammer house writer Jimmy Sangster shot in widescreen and colour in the South of France.

After the preliminaries are dispensed in the form of a robbery - in which we're treated to the singular sight of Michael Medwin in drag - we get to the meat of the story in the form of the meeting in a lonely seaside house between Medwin and an eccentric old man played by Sir Donald Wolfit.

There follows the sort of mind games soon to become a Losey convention; with a pay-off that I for one didn't see coming.

After a man robs a casino disguised as a woman (the *man* was disguised as a woman, not the casino, silly!), he escapes to the beach with his co-hort, whom he kills. In the process, he is shot in the arm. He wanders around the beach until he finds a shack. There he meets an interesting recluse who holds the key to his future.

This was a weird one. 3/4 of it feels like the middle act of a movie, but then has a conclusive ending. The man in the shack also has a secret that's revealed at the end, but it's not so much revealed as "duh"-inducing. Still, an interesting, well performed, fairly entertaining short.