At one stage David MacDonald had a bit of a reputation as a director, owing to his war documentaries and the B film hit This Man is News but his post war films were very underwhelming. This is a case in point - which really disappointed me because I enjoy a good alpine-set thriller.
This has all the ingredients of a film that should work: a bunch of mysterious types gathered in a chalet, cut off via snow, the reveal that there's some Nazi gold buried there.
It suffers from uninteresting characters - I thought it was going to be unusual with Dennis Price having to pretend to be a screenwriter for director Robert Newton but nothing is really done with that. Why have Price and Newton as heroes? Why use Newton so little? Why cast someone as obvious as Herbert Lom as the villain? Why have a story with so much talk about what happened in the past.
There's an exotic pretty girl, a dodgy Brit. Hitchcock or Laudner/Gilliat or even Ralph Thomas would have made these situations perky and fun. Not MacDonald. It's never that suspenseful or scary. It's not awful - just dull.
Price seems ill at ease as a hero with silly hair and sweaters. Newton and Lom are always fun.Mila Parcey is forgettable
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