Smokescreen

Made on a zero budget as a programme filler in the mid-Sixties. Don't let this put you off. Worth watching for the quirky, amusing script and the central performance from the always excellent Peter Vaughan. The murder mystery isn't perhaps up to Agatha Christie's standard, but the idea of insurance investigator as detective is a fairly novel one. (OK so they did it in 'Double Indemnity') Also a decent document of Britain in the early sixties.

The biggest shame about Jim O'Connelly's quirky low-budget British post-noir SMOKESCREEN is that it was a film instead of a television series since Peter Vaughan's perpetually cautious and stingy insurance adjuster Roper had so many more adventures in him....

His particular case involves what the audience and a young couple witness from the very beginning: a burning car driving off a cliff, and we never see a driver, which is what Roper searches for throughout the hour-long programmer, going from one person to the next in the usual investigative fashion...

What makes SMOKESCREEN so fun and involving are not only the oddballs he comes across, but how Vaughan's own eccentric character reacts to each, especially an equally chintzy doctor and bribing railroad worker...

And then the supposed dead man's wife played by CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF ingenue Yvonne Romain, who Roper's handsome sidekick (John Carson) is smitten with... You'll be glad they keep having to return to her.

Vaughan would later play big, strong, intimidating monsters of men, like in Sam Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS as the leader of a gang of low-rent Brits bullying Dustin Hoffman, and even an actual ogre in TIME BANDITS, which is why it's fun seeing him jauntily making his way through East Essex with an umbrella and the countenance of an awkward, uptight accountant who never threw a punch...

Which is an important Noir-gumshoe element since anything can derive from the woodwork, and a great cinematic investigator is usually the most vulnerable to unseen/unknown elements: only there aren't any deadly thugs lurking through darkened alleys... And yet the eclectic day-lit obstacles can be equally complicated, and just as intriguing, along with a grand sense of the traditional Whodunit.

Vaughan's Roper, much like Peter Falk as COLUMBO the following decade, has a way of coaxing information that only a cerebral manipulator can muster... and can you imagine if COLUMBO had only one movie instead of an entire series? Well in this case, we have to.

SMOKESCREEN is a rather endearing little British thriller with a strong comic flavour to allow it to stand out from the rest. Although it has the same low budget, ensemble cast feel as many other films from Butcher's Film Studios, it's the comic angle - which centres around the central character's miserliness - which makes it special.

The storyline is rather familiar, but the Brighton locations give it an edge. The dependable Peter Vaughan plays an insurance investigator who investigates the death of a man who died when his burning car went over the cliffs. To this end, he's teamed up with a youthful John Carson (PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES) as his assistant and must get to grips with the dead man's wife, played by the glamorous Yvonne Romain (CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF). Meanwhile, familiar faces from British movies like Gerald Flood and Sam Kydd regularly appear.

SMOKESCREEN comes across as a rather genteel whodunit, playing out like a simple murder mystery with a big 'reveal' at the climax. All aspects of the film are ordinary apart from the comic streak, which is very well handled and genuinely funny. It's this comedy that makes SMOKESCREEN worth watching.

A gently, wryly humorous fairly engrossing who-done-what lacking top names but packed with familiar and able players who'd supported many a British classic. Sam Kydd - was there a British post-war film without him as able seaman, workman, stuttering gang-member or as here,once again, a waiter? Derek Guyler in a neat cameo reminding us of a time before "have-nice-day" came to these shores. Typecast they might have been but familiar because they were the best of their type. I didn't then know the name of Penny Morell but certainly recognised a top performance as the very obliging but drunken secretary. Budget production it might have been but one gets the impression of an esprit de corps of director, cast and crew of professionals working for beer-money but rightly proud nevertheless.

Very enjoyable "who dunit" not overly long at 70 minutes. It was of particular interest as it was filmed in the area where I live.

Although it is amusing how Roper fiddles expenses wherever he can while investigating insurance fraud, there is an ulterior motive. Anyone who has claimed expenses will laugh at this, or maybe shift uneasily in their seat.

Reference is made to the coastal railway link between Brighton and Eastbourne. No such line has ever existed. The station mentioned, Hellingly, could not possibly be seen from the vantage point shown on Seaford Head. Hellingly is north of Hailsham some 13 miles away. Hellingly Station does feature in the film (Derek Guyler as the Stationmaster) which is of historical interest as the station did close the following year as mentioned in the dialogue. The defunct station now sits on The Cuckoo Line, a local cycle and foot path linking Polegate and Eridge.

This film proves that you do not need a large budget to make an entertaining film. A good script and surrounding locations is all you need.