The Last Man to Hang

Well the film plot is appalling so why the 7/10? The plot calls for a mystifying added conclusion. Why? The film should have cut to the forgiving husband who accidentally killed his wife but we get something else, something mystifying in the extreme?

OK. Why the 7/10? It's for the court scene - very worthy and Vic Madden an unsung hero of the 20th c (gone far too soon). Did he ever act badly? Much more than a Sam Kydd type. This man was an actor. He should, perhaps, have struck out for fame instead he diversified. Taken too soon I believe a few more films and he would have been held today in the same high esteem of a Tom Courtney or a Freddy Jones.

The film about a man struggling to come to terms with self-blame of the death of his wife, is shallowed by the lead actor. Perhaps the last man to hang was indeed Tom Conway. Miss Sellers could have been asked for a POV, but alas it's now just too late! (RIP dear lady).

Terence Fisher is famous for directing dozens of popular genre films, notably the Hammer horror classics, but his ponderous, very boring treatment of this stupid courtroom drama is incompetent. I nearly dozed off early on.

The screenplay is at fault, with several flashbacks and telegraphed clues that bog things down, and even at 71 minutes of running time this B-level British feature from Columbia seems padded. In particular, showing the family life of the jurors as they receive their court summons is totally extraneous footage.

For such a nothing movie it has 35 credited roles, mostly flatly performed, especially Tom Conway's walk-through as the lead. The unconvincing final plot twist is asinine, more appropriate to a Z-level exploitation movie than a major production that has a misleading subplot about capital punishment on the verge of being abolished (hence the title), yet that did not occur until it was suspended for murder nine years after the film was released.

As reviewer John Howard Reid has pointed out, there is a section in the film too close for coincidence with the entirely famous and superior 1957 "12 Angry Men! where one juror holds out against the rest

This is a film of two halves, so different in quality as to be quite mystifying. The first half features the rather wooden Tom Conway who is really not up to interpreting his rather poorly scripted role but fairly essential viewing to understand the second half, the murder trial at the Old Bailey. This is well done by nearly all concerned - far better written, acted and directed. This is the engrossing part, the first half just a make weight. Quite a good cast including an impressive young Anthony Newley

A very wooden, ageing Tim Conway, looks totally disinterested in his part and also makes little effort to engage the audience about his feelings towards his murdered wife. Since he seems to show little emotion about his own circumstances of being on trial for his life, and the fact that he 'wanders' through the film almost tight lipped, the film becomes lifeless and aimless! The only real interest comes in the courtroom scenes. Give this film a miss. A wasted opportunity of what could have been a dramatic and nail biting film. Instead it induces sleep!

If presented with this along with 'The Intimate Stranger' and 'Hell is a City', the Losey might prove tricky to pick out. Five years later Losey and Guest were still both making black & white thrillers (of which those by Guest probably had the edge) but Fisher was by now firmly established as a director of Technicolor morsels for Hammer; while at the time of this astringent courtroom drama he was the only one never to have worked in colour.

Like most British films of the era it has an extraordinary supporting cast; including fleeting appearances by John Schlesinger as a doctor called Goldfinger and an already worldly-looking young Gillian Lynne as Anthony Newley's girlfriend.