Murder in Eden

Very good Brit B, with Ray McAnally (better known to me as a car connoisseur on BBC Entertainment, and here acting none at all anally) playing an effective Inspector Sharkey, and Feller trying to pass off as a French girl with bulging eyes in a cute bubble car, whilst the villainous vehicle is a magnificent Bentley with a weird "Spirit of the Wolf" metallic figurehead... ah, the saucy sixties!

Sexy Yvonne Buckingham is a palace playing the sadly short part of Vicky Woolf. Exquisite face, figure and legs - to die for!

Competent photography (despite the obvious painted background in the final sequence), excellent and very melodious French accordion soundtrack and capable direction by Max Varnel (whom I do not know from Adam but whose father was apparently a French director of some standing), all neatly packed into an economical 61 minutes. Definitely worth watching!

"Murder in Eden" (1961) is a very minor British crime drama about art forgery and art theft, something I've seen done much better, but, admittedly, so many times before that this version of the same ol' same ol' has me stymied as to being creative enough to write a review that's worthy of it. It's not a bad drama at all. At only 63 minutes it doesn't wear itself out, although my wife was getting antsy and wishing it were over so she could watch re-runs of "The Big Bang Theory". That probably says enough. Oh, Norman Rodway's in it, so that makes it worth the watch. It actually stars Ray McAnally and Catherine Feller. Feller's in it far too much, and, I'm very sorry to say, we noticed her overbite far more than her acting. McAnally, who ended up a great character actor in England, is very good, but his charisma in this for some reason tries to hide behind shadows and can't be seen very often. Such ghostly presence isn't conducive to promoting star material. Rather, it hides it like a star in the sky's hidden during the day by the sun. Here, the sun was hidden too. After all, this was black and white, and the two mixed together makes grey - my overall view of the film. One last thing, Yvonne Buckingham's in it. If she'd just traded places with Catherine Feller... But then, coulda, shoulda...it woulda...

Murder in Eden is a quota quickie. A low budget B movie that has an early leading role for the great character actor Ray McAnally.

He plays Inspector Sharkey called into investigate the death of an art critic in a hit and run accident. The critic had earlier claimed that some paintings in an art exhibition were fake.

Sharkey finds himself paired up with a beautiful French journalist Geneviève Beaujean. It is not long before someone tries to run Sharkey over.

A brisk plot but it still feels padded. At least there is an interesting twist near the end but was Sharkey always one step ahead?

This might be the only time McAnally had a leading role in a movie. Then again the film was shot in Ireland but is supposedly set in London.

The corpses pile up without anyone being too upset in this light-hearted quickie shot in Ireland concerning the theft of a painting worth £55,000 (a lot of money in those days). For probably the first and last time Ray McAnally plays the dashing two-fisted hero, while continental cutie Catherine Feller drives about in a bubble car to accordion music supplied on the soundtrack by Wilfred Burns to make sure we know she's French.

When an acclaimed art critic announces that a famous painting adoring an Irish gallery is a forgery, it's owner "Arnold Woolf" (Mark Singleton) is outraged. Shortly afterwards, said critic has come a cropper in a car accident and it falls to "Insp. Sharkey" (Ray McAnally) to get to the bottom of the accident, a theft and a fraud. Add to the mix the presence of the chic "Geneviève" (Catherine Feller) who potters around in her tiny bubble car and we have just about enough ingredients to make this crime drama entirely... forgettable. Indeed, aside from some rather jaunty accordion music the whole thing is curiously dull. McAnally exudes no screen presence at all (on the basis of this rather lacklustre effort you would never had had him succeed in later life). The story is pretty pedestrian - though there is maybe the merest hint of a twist at the end - and though prettily enough shot leaves little to remember.