Pink String and Sealing Wax

Having supplied an elderly female customer with a remedy for flatulence and served as analyst at a murder trial, stern faced pharmacist, Mervyn Johns returns home to impress his holier than thou, never spare the rod brand of ultra muscular Christianity upon his deeply unhappy, largely subservient family.

He perpetuates his oppressive regime by blocking daughter (Jean Ireland)'s ambition to become an opera singer, coercing her towards an unwanted marriage and a mundane future as a piano teacher. Eldest son (Gordon Jackson) is then ridiculed for writing love poems to the girl of his dreams. It's enough to drive the poor bloke to drink.....which it inevitably does! And that's before we even begin to consider his experiments on small animals. All in the name of science, of course. Everything stems from a sense of duty. Not least, rigorous church attendance, whilst bemoaning the fact that sermons are becoming ever shorter. (Sometimes, less is more mate!)

Drinking culture in Brighton 1880's style: Mainly flat capped men supping tankards of ale in a smoky, poky pub. Women prefer a succession of whiskies, with the odd brandy or port for variety. Inebriated landlord, Garry Marsh is a disciple of the hard stuff.....and just when we're all thinking that Johns is the villain for putting the fear of God into his timid family, Marsh's wife, Googie Withers - a piece of work if ever there was one - springs into action, making the formidable pharmacist look positively saintly. Attaching herself to the docile Jackson (amongst a legion of others) she sneakily gains access to some of the more virulent concoctions stored at the pharmacy and a cunning plan to dispose of her big, bald, boozy husband begins to take shape. Whilst on the domestic front there may be seeds of rebellion in the ranks at the Johns household.

With a similar ring to 'Arsenic and Old Lace', Pink String is the familiar title of a movie offering a fascinating vignette of late Victorian life. The extremes of deeply rooted Christian faith, overspilling into moralistic rigidity, starkly contrasting with the consequences of alcohol fuelled lasciviousness. Never quite goth, but set in a still steam driven world. The approaching advances of the next century remain two decades away. The only electricity here is generated entirely by Withers.

Having read the reviews below, I think this film has received short shrift from the reviewers, so I give it a 10 because I was totally won over by the suspense. Perhaps it is because the reviewers did not get too immersed in the story line as Hamer intended or that they had preconceived notions about the actors as indicated by their unfair criticisms. I thought the actors held up pretty well in their roles, totally compelling and the dialogue highly entertaining. In particular Googie Withers who I felt gave her best appearance worthy of an Oscar were she to qualify. Jean Ireland and Sally Ann Howes provided the lighter side of the drama counterbalanced by the religious fanaticism of Mervyn Johns as the strict patriarch. All in all I found the film very absorbing and at times even riveting.

The detective plot is never really suspenseful , eminently predictable , and sententious at that ;after the first sequence ,in which Sutton did not spare a thought for the woman he helped send to the gallows,one could expect a more convincing backlash.

Therefore ,the most interesting side is the depiction of a Victorian -era petit bourgeois family ,where the holier-than-thou father rules his son and daughters with a rod of iron .They are not allowed to follow their dreams so it will have serious repercussions on the naive son ,who's denied the woman he loves and finds solace with an adultress ; one scene sums up this fossilized milieu in an admirably succint style: for the Lent ,the girls have to recite some kind of act of contrition !

The stand-out is arguably Googie Withers ,who ,in her last scenes ,literally mesmerizes the viewer ; four years later ,she would blow Gene Tierney off the screen in Dassin's "night and the city" ,not a small feat.

I must admit a level of disappointment. I am getting these films from a list called Best British Noirs. I have to say that I haven't found the level very high. It's also possible I have already seen the best ones.

This film takes 45 minutes for a plot to develop. I know films have lost the art of the buildup, but it's one thing when you're waiting for the San Francisco earthquake to start and another for a woman to decide to poison her husband.

Most of the film, set in Victorian England, concerns a family run by a strict and unreasonable father. The son in the family meets the flirtatious soon to be widowed Googie Withers. She uses him to make a boyfriend jealous and then steals strychnine from the family pharmacy to kill her drunk husband.

A subplot has to do with the older daughter wanting to pursue professional classical singing. The singing did capture that old-fashioned technique students were trained in, with lots of tremolo.

The title refers to the way pharmacists wrapped their packages.

Googie livens up the proceedings.

Excellent acting from the lead players, (especially from Mervyn Johns as the puritanical Victorian pater familias and Googie Withers as the pub landlady and murderess), and a good supporting cast as well mean that this Victorian-era pot boiler set in Brighton could have been something special, given the right direction. Unfortunately, though, it lacks this latter quality and the plot development is disjointed and lacks the necessary twists and thrills to have done the job. What results is a very average, Saturday afternoon matinee thriller, which leaves you thinking of the many ways it could have been improved upon. Perhaps a film studies seminar could use it for this purpose? 6/10.