Code of Scotland Yard

Oscar Homolka is the owner of "The Shop at Sly Corner" in this film that also stars Kenneth Kent, Kenneth Griffin, and Jean Colin.

Homolka is an antiques dealer who, embittered of the world since being tortured on Devil's Island, receives stolen goods.

He is, however, devoted to his daughter (Colin) a promising violinist. And may I add that the violin playing in this film was exquisite.

Homolka has a deceitful assistant, Archie Fellows (Griffin). He overhears Homolka talking about his past, which his daughter doesn't know.

Fellows blackmails Homolka until the situation has become untenable and getting worse.

Homolka has proposition for him, if Fellows will take it.

Very good and engaging film with Homolka sympathetic and Griffin mean as dirt. Good noir.

Oskar Homolka (Mr Heiss) owns an antique shop and is very proud of his violin-playing daughter Muriel Pavlow (Margaret) who is just breaking into the big time. Kenneth Griffith (Archie) is a slimy weasel who works in the shop and is attracted to Muriel. God knows why. She has a boyfriend in the Navy - Derek Farr (Robert) - and they are the rather bland goody-two-shoes couple. It is the other actors who give this film colour and the desire to see things through to the end. Griffith has a weasely plan to get one over Homolka.

One strange thing about the film was making Homolka a French citizen. No, he's not. What's the point in trying to pull that one off? Anyway, I'm not surprised at what he's up to with his antiques and when you have a character like the slimy Griffith as an assistant, then you are asking for trouble. Diana Dors (Mildred) has a memorable small role as a cheap girlfriend for Griffith. As does Katie Johnson as a customer in the shop - you'll recognize her from her pivotal role in "The Ladykillers" (1955).

This was best known as Diana Dors' first movie. Though she is not in the credits, crowds of her admirers turned out to see it. The plot twists and turns were so surprising, never quite what I guessed might have happened. Holmolka's performance is very realistic rather than a costumed caricature. Dors steals the show with her nasty wiggle walk through about four scenes and less than 10 minutes of film.

Oskar Homolka is an antiques dealer with a daughter, Muriel Pavlow, who is studying to be a concert violinist. He is well respected and kindly, with a wide circle of friends that includes Derek Farr, a Royal Navy surgeon who brings him oddities from across the world. Farr is in love with his daughter. His other friends in Garry Marsh, at Scotland Yard, and Manning Whitley, a burglar from whom he buys stolen goods. He tells Whitley he's getting out of that line of business; he understands Whitley's disappointment, but he worries about public exposure, since he's wanted in France for having escaped from Devil's Island for murder. They part on good terms. However, Homolka's shop assistant, Kenneth Griffith, has overheard the conversation and begins to blackmail Homolka.

It's produced and directed by George King, best known as a director of cheap quota quickies in the 1930%, who had a lot of success directing Tod Slaughter n old-line melodramas. In the 1940s, King's star rose, and he was in charge of some fine programmers.

This one is in line with the melodramas he had directed in the previous decade. So long as he is concentrating on Homolka, it is a first-rate character study of a kind man under pressure. In the final third, he falls back into some of his habits as a director of cheap movies, most obviously during a car chase sequence.

Still, it's mostly a fine movie, almost entirely due to Homolka, and a pleasure to watch.

This film has an excellent cast.Kenneth Griffiths being very nasty as the blackmailing Archie.Gary Marsh being his usual jovial policeman.Bits from Kathleen Harrison and Irene Handel.However towering over them all is Oscar Hamolka and his expressive eyebrows.He steals every scene he is in,not just in this film but every film he appeared in.His is an excellent performance which keeps the film going after the murder of Archie.However the film does rely on an unlikely contrivance to bring the film to its slightly tame ending.What on earth was Irene Handel doing wandering around in the woods late at night?Due to her presence the murder eventually unravels.