Triple Deception

The film that made Michael Craig is a well paced colourful crime thriller shot in the location of Paris where Craig is mistakenly taken for a known smuggler who he resembles quite uncannily & is persuaded to go under-cover to infiltrate a counterfeiting organisation & also keep his cover with his smuggling colleagues.Apart from falling for the same local cabaret singer (Julia Arnall)who the real Steve Chancellor was enmeshed with, & the double crossing begins & along the way he struggle's to get to the truth until the climatic finale to unmask the ring leaders which include Brenda De Banzie & the ice cool menace of Anton Diffring.

For a french reviewer like me who love film noir, House Of Secrets is an absolute entertaining movie. I first loved all the Parisian locations (around rue du Bac, l'île Saint-Louis, Eiffel tower, rue Lamarck, an unknown restaurant) and Marseille.

The plot with impersonation is interesting with some fine twists. The fights are real fast paced, destroying the furniture more violently than in American serials. The cinematography by Harry Waxman is very colorful and shadowy. The editing by the brilliant Sidney Hayers (soon to direct Circus Of Horrors and Burn Witch Burn) is real fast and raw.

The best surprise again for a french reviewer is the casting of Gérard Oury as a badman, very surprising when you see his future top box office movies with Bourvil and Louis de Funès as a director...

Swell souvenir.

With such a cast list could this go wrong well there was a chance that some actors were miscast but on the whole the film and its mission were successful on a tight budget one thing that wasn't tight was the charming actress of supreme quality brenda de banzie wow what a women who could oozes sex appeal fully dressed by the sparkle in her eyes and a smile so wide and a hint of naughtiness simply having her in this makes it a 10

Michael Craig would have been a terrific James Bond. I don't know if he was ever screen tested. He had the look and physical abilities. The story has more twists than a mountain road and a climax right out of a Bond film. Arnall and Bates brought eye candy and acting skills. The fight scenes were brutal and more realistic than the usual phoney slugfest.

As I was watching this I started to notice that the story arc seemed familiar. This 1956 film has all of the hallmarks of the 1960's James Bond films. The gangs, the double-crosses, the big schemes, the villain bosses, and the women. It's not a bad yarn.