Panic

John Gilling wrote and directed this very nice film noir in 1963, we see a lot of nasty characters, from a sexual predator hotel owner to an impressive brute played by the famous Milton Reid, from stupid beatnicks to all kinf of crooks, all threatening the beautiful Janine Gray having lost memory in a hold up (Janine Grey is a not too well known actress, 25 titles in her filmography, and mostly tv series). Thanks for her, she meets Glyn Houston as Mike, a honest former boxer who'll do everything for her without abusing, until the desperate last shot. Kind of Hithcock. Don't miss the sexy Julie Mendez.

Everyone gets into a panic here, except one, who gets all the worst beatings, but at least he knows how to fight back. Janine Grey is a Swiss secretary at a diamond business company and beautiful as such, but unfortunately she has the wrong kind of boy friend, who decides to use her position to make a heist together with two other bandits. The heist fails completely in a blundering fiasco, as the bank manager gets shot to death by one of the villains, who now are wanted for murder, while Janine, knocked unconscious by the robbers when trying to interfere, wakes up in a state of shock with a total amnesia. Her efforts to put her mind together again is not entirely successful, but fortunately she gets a defender at an old shabby café, a former boxer, who still know how to fight. The complications pile up in a tremendous confusion for everyone involved, while gradually the police gets into the mystery to be able to sort it out. The film ends at the top of the confusion, and you can only hope that the general panic gradually will end.

Janine Gray works for a Hatton Gardens jeweler. One evening, her boss asks her to stay late. Two Germans are coming in, and she's bilingual. It turns out they're a couple of crooks associated with her boyfriend. They kill the jeweler, take a big stone, and knock her out. When she comes to, she's in a fugue state, with her memory gone. She goes into hiding, but the police want to find her. So does her boy friend, and his associates. She wanders around, until she runs into Glyn Houston, a boxer on the downslide who takes a fancy to help rescue the damsel in distress.

It's a bit of idiot plotting, strengthened by Miss Gray's uncertainty of what's going on. The acting is solid, but it all could be quickly cleared up, and the police are on the job, and doing a good one. Still, the acting is good, and the camerawork by Geoffrey Faithfull is solid. Faithfull had been a cinematographer for Hepworth back in the silent era, and would work through the end of the 1960s, totaling almost 200 features and shorts in a long career. He died in 1979, aged 86.

Lots of 1960s jazz-style music sets the tone for this disappointingly run-of-the-mill crime noir from John Gilling. Janine Gray works for a jeweller in London's famous Hatton Garden when she falls victim to a robbery that kills her boss and leaves her unconscious. She awakens with amnesia and in panic goes into hiding - not just from the pursuing police, but also from her boyfriend (Dyson Lovell) who is mixed up with the thieves. In her confusion, she encounters a boxer - Glyn Houston - who takes a shine to her and gives her shelter whilst she begins to piece it all together. It has more action - including a boxing match - than many of it's British counterparts and the acting is solid enough; but nothing much new to see here...

Some unusual aspects to this thriller,which surfaced recently on a London tv station screening.For one the actors at the bottom of the cast are better known than the two leads.John Gilling uses unusual camera angles in imitation of Carol Reed.Reasonable story though there are some implausible aspects.