Model for Murder

I've always wondered how somebody throwing a knife can propel it with sufficient force and accuracy to embed it in someone (or a door or wall if they miss), but that particular feat is again accomplished when the model in this film is murdered.

Whatever. A good cast scurry about this lively potboiler made with nonchalant competence and scripted with a sense of humour.

Julia Arnell, a high-priced model, is murdered when she accidentally interrupts a diamond heist while returning her dress to the fashion shop. The remainder of the movie is seeing if the bad guys are going to get caught and how Keith Andes, who has been falsely accused, will clear himself. Michael Gough and Edwin Richfield have great chemistry as the bad guys. Hazel Court and Jean Aubrey are cute as sisters helping Andes clear himself. The movie itself while having an interesting plot lacks suspense or tension. The musical score is horrible. Okay as a time waster.

Merchant mariner Keith Andes is in London to speak with the ex-fiancee of his dead brother. When she turns up dead in the middle of a jewel robbery by fashion house head Michael Gough, he is clunked on the head and framed. It's up to him to try and prove his innocence with the help of Hazel Court.

It's a fun little B mystery, directed by Terry Bishop, with lots of pretty girls and several brief, eccentric characters. Gough is suave as the bad guy whose well laid plans for the robbery go awry; George Benson is fun as the boring and slightly boorish industrialist dating the model; and Charles Lamb has a nice little bit as a lock keeper, making sure he pockets a tip while saying he shouldn't have. Andes is a trifle suave and perfunctory as the innocent man accused as murder, but at 70 minutes, it's great to watch the tightly written how-catch-him movie wind its way through the plot

Unfortunately 1959 was a simply terrible year for fashion. Hazel Court and the actress playing her sister Nancy are forced to beetle around in frumpy "sack back" dresses and bucket hats, while the star model gown is a vulgar creation in gold lame. The girl playing the brother's ex-fiancee is good, with her rank starlet voice and industrialist boyfriend.

The villains, Gough, Burke and Richfield give their usual sterling performances.

I think those dresses really were called "sacks".

Cult stars of horror films, Hazel Court and Michael Gough, have leading roles in this thriller, set in the glamorous world of haute couture. Gough is Kingsley Beauchamp, head of a West End fashion house, who's planning to steal some valuable jewellery that's on loan to him. Keith Andes is the American Merchant Navy officer visiting the salon to meet his late brother's girlfriend, played by Julia Arnall. Returning an expensive dress, borrowed for her night out, she surprises the robbers in the act and is fatally stabbed by Beauchamp's chauffeur. Guess who's then fitted-up for the murder?

For a thriller, this is acutely lacking in pace and tension and so doesn't really work. The cast are some compensation for this, however. Keith Andes gives a strong performance in the lead, bringing some credibility to the sort of character the script has lying shocked and injured in hospital, then immediately tearing around all over London, despite being a total stranger in the city. There's the poise, allure and glamour of Hazel Court and Julia Arnall; Patricia Jessel as Beauchamp's designer and associate, Madame Dupont, good old Edwin Richfield playing the murderous chauffeur, Alfred Burke as a crooked bod named Podd, and not least, Michael Gough himself in full villainous mode. Hence my slightly generous rating.