Top unmade Margaret Lockwood films

 1) Rob Roy - announced before WW2, cancelled because of it... a great shame, would've been great, Gainsborough, Ted Black, Will Fyffe, Lockwood..

2) The Blue Lagoon - another Gainsborough project cancelled by WW2 it was good this was made in colour but young Lockwood would've been perfect 

3) Vanity Fair - announced in the late 1940s, presumably cancelled due to the financial crisis. Could have been fun. Maybe. I have limited confidence of Rank.

4) Ann Veronica - adaptation of the novel by HG Wells. Hmm... maybe director dependent. She did do it for TV and no one cared.

5) The Wicked Lady's Daughter - this should have been made. Arliss and company were still around. 

6) Mary Magdalene - Rank wanted to do this. She refused. Hmm.... I like the idea but Rank couldn't have pulled it off. The Americans could have.

Movie review - "The Astonished Heart" (1950) **1/2

 Noel Coward couldn't put a foot wrong in World War Two in cinema as well as the stage - In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed, Brief Encounter, Blithe Spirit. He couldn't seem to put a foot right after the war. He wrote and starred in this and directed it so he can't duck responsibility.

Some of this isn't bad. The story is simple but meaty - a shrink who is used to dealing with human emotions can't handle his when he falls for a woman (Margaret Leighton) while his wife (Celia Johnson) looks on. It's the same storyline as The Deep Blue Sea only with the guy breaking down. Maybe it would've been more effective with it as a woman breaking down. Actually no, there's nothing wrong with it being a guy if it had the right actor.

Michael Redgrave was cast, but kicked out during filming and replaced by Coward. I didn't see any Redgrave footage but Coward doesn't work. He was looking old, which isn't fatal, but is too restrained and never believably in love with Margaret Leighton. He has some effective-ish moments (there's some witty gags) but it's all in lower gear. He needed stronger directors to push him. Anthony Darborough and Terence Fisher are the credited directors but I can't see them pushing Coward. Coward himself regretted Carol Reed didn't direct.

Leighton looks beautiful (she wasn't often shot flatteringly) and is good as is Johnson. The central flaw is Coward. Who else could've played it? I think John Mills could've cut loose - maybe.  James Mason, definitely. And Trevor Howard, even Robert Newton. Coward's limitations didn't matter in In Which We Serve because he was protected by the uniform and action and also there were other protagonists - here it weighs on his shoulders. All the action is emotional. And he doesn't have David Lean.

Because it deals with sex, obssession and suicide there is plenty of raw material here, but it's not exploited.

Movie review - "The Gypsy and the Gentleman" (1958) **

 The frustrating thing about Rank was that their ideas were solid but they could never get the execution right. It was a good idea to bring back the Gainsborough melodrama style, and some solid talent spotting that saw them assign the film to Joseph Losey, and allow him to cast Melinda Mercouri as a gypsy, and Keith Michell and Patrick McGoohan as the other leads. There's nice colour and sets - it's an expensive film, looks good, is peopled with colourful character actors like Flora Robson and Nigel Green.

But yet again Rank demonstrated it didn't understand Gainsborough and the script is both simple and confusing.  The emotional lines aren't clear and the cast lopsided. These films worked with "good" and "bad" characters - normally two good and two bad, who would intersect. But here Michell is a wastrel rake, who marries a gypsy for... spite? Love? Lust? It's never clear. Neither is Mercouri's motivation. She loves McGoohan I think? Wants Michell for cash? That would've been good. But it's confusing.

I would've had Michell not be a rake. Make him good. (There is a "good" male, a whimpy doctor who loves Michell's sister but he barely registers.) Or at least make it clear he genuinely loves Mercouri. I was never sure. Hold off the reveal he's got no money. Have McGoohan more clearly drive the plot. Make it clear that Michell loves Mercouri and she loves McGoohan. It's not clear. It's frustrating. 

It's a shame because the three leads have presence (the good girl, Michell's sister, is bland) and it's gorgeous looking. Losey made interesting failures.

Book review - "My Lucky Star" by Margret Lockwood (1955)

 Charming memoir from Lockwood, quite early in her career, really - twenty years in. But, as it turned out, it came as she stopped being a film star.

It was an eventful life. She was born into Karachi, moved to England, started acting young, made a fair fist of it early on, helped by her beauty, talent, and the support of Gainsborough. 

I would have liked more about the movies and co stars - there's no a lot here. There is a lot about her husband, her mother, her lover "Bill", and most of all her daughter Toots, the great love of her life. This is very sweet.

Movie review - "The Brothers" (1947) ***

 David MacDonald directed so many bad British movies the quality of this one is a surprise. It helps the story is simple - Othello on the Isle of Skye - and it was shot on location, so looks terrific and is a documentary-ish view of life on the island, and MacDonald came from docos.

Patricia Roc is lovely as the orphan girl who goes to work for laird Finlay Currie and is lusted after by his sons, Duncan Macrae and Maxwell Reed, as well as Andrew Crawford. There's excellent work from Currie, Macrae and Crawford, as well as Will Fyffe (another local) and Roc is very good. In real life she was a good time girl so knowing that makes this more enjoyable. She does a nude swim - at least her body double does - at long distance; we see her backside which has to be some sort of first.

Reed has the right brooding appearance but struggles to act - when he has dialogue he can barely get it out. When he doesn't talk he's fine. But honestly. Come on, Box, surely there were better people around? (Andrew Crawford for instance can act).

Stunning photography. Love the music. It's a tale about a woman in love with an abusive man, like The Seventh Veil also made by Sydney Box. It is one of his better films.

Book review - "Patricia Roc" by Michael Hodgson

 Entertaining, affectionate biography of the star, an endearing heroine of the 1940s. Roc was lucky in many ways - pretty girl, well off background - who wanted to be in pictures. She had a pleasant on screen presence that ensured work in "girl" parts. She was fortunate to come up in the 40s when for a brief moment British cinema actually cared about promoting female stars. Roc had a "girl next door" quality that was spot on and became a name in Gainsborough movies such as Millions Like Us.

What makes the book interesting is the oddness of Roc's career - genuinely popular for a brief time. she kept in public attention due to support of people like J Arthur Rank, but when the tide went out it went out quickly. It also helps that Roc had a colourful personal life - she loved sex, always had affairs (Anthony Steel fathered her child), was nicknamed "bed rock". Married for money eventually, seemed to regret it... she was arrested for shoplifting. I think she missed acting but maybe was more into the lifestyle than the craft. I could be wrong.

Affectionate, easy to read book.

Movie review - "The Wicked Lady" (1983) **

 Michael Winner's remake of the classic is very faithful - he follows the structure - and packs the movie full of great actors and production value. But it doesn't work - at least not as well. It might have been better going off on his own path making it truly trashy. There are some boobs but they seem added - if he went soft core the whole way the film would seem to have more point.

Everything feels off. In the original it was clear Lockwood was motivated by her mother's death... Dunaway says those lines here but Winner shoots her reaction in long shot, so it doesn't have impact.

The ages of the cast is all off. Dunaway seems to old - she was 42, but Lockwood at 31 or whatever made sense. Denholm Elliot is too old at 60 to play someone truly loved by Glynis Barber who was in her late twenties. Alan Bates doesn't feel dashing enough at 50.

On one hand I liked the Barber and Oliver Tobias were f*ck buddies but then it didn't make sense for the character - if Barber was like that how did she lose Elliot to Dunaway... because in the original Lockwood seduced him. But if Barber is sexually active...? Barber and Dunaway need to be different. And why would Barber want Elliot instead of Tobias? And why would Tobias want Dunaway instead of Barber? You never feel that Barber genuinely likes Elliot or that Dunaway likes Tobias.

It's frustrating. The whip duel at least livens things up. The Barber-Tobias sex scene is not very sexy - we all have different ideas of what that is, but I don't know too many people who see it that way. It is hilarious the way they cut in her body double.

A very useful exercise to show how a remake that's very close can still fail. It should have just gone full AIP/New World/Big Bad Mama style.

The best bit is John Gielgud and Dunaway - they match well.

Movie review - "The Huggets Abroad" (1949) *1/2

 An example of the commercial ineptitude of Sydney Box's Gainsborough  - take a solid bunch of actors playing recognisable types and put them in a stupid story. The Huggetts decide to emigrate to South Africa so they... get a truck and drive across the desert? What? Who does that?

They don't get further than Algeria. There's the balding son in law, a new girl playing his wife (Dinah Sheridan), an American diamond smuggler. Petula Clark sings, Susan Shaw looks hot, there's some Arabs and French Foreign legion forts.

The actors are fine. But it's so stupid, the Huggetts driving across the desert.

Movie review - "Vote for Huggett" (1949) **

I liked the first two Huggett films but this entry didn't work for me. Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison do fine work - actually the acting is accomplished. I just didn't care. Political storylines get so vague... it becames about land values and crap.

This was uninteresting. There's some pretty women without characters to play, really old leading men, a lack of a sense of family and life. All love couples have old men and younger women.

Diana Dors, one of the best things about the last movie, is given a different role, that is minor - the girfriend of a spiv who looks like Turhan Bey. She's wasted.

There's some ordinary songs. Little charm.

Sydney Box was a lousy studio head.

Movie review - "A Boy a Girl and a Bike" (1949) **

A film I wanted to like more than I did because it has an interesting world - Yorkshire bike club - and Aussie interest: John McCallum and Ralph Smart, plus Diana Dors.

But while the film has good things about it, it's a bit all over the shop. The adventures of a bike club feel like it should be a kids film, and at times the movie has that vibe (there's a plot about a stolen bike racket), but it's also got these thirty something actors like McCallum and Patrick Holt chasing after Honor Blackman - their parts feel written for younger actors.

The whole movie McCallum is chasing Blackman, she seems into him... then at the end he introduces her to his parents, they're a bit cool, so the next scene he's passing her over to Holt. It's very unsatisfactory especially as Holt seems like such a drip - she's too good for him. (This scene felt like it was added after previews or something but who would be satisfied by it? They should have just made Holt the villain - the film lacks a villain in the final bike race.)

At times you get the sense the filmmakers were going for a Holiday Camp style multi-storyline movie (there's a subplot about an escaped criminal living in the community, and about a kid who was orphaned in the war and has gone off the rails) - which in hindsight is the way they should have gone once they decided to cast it with adults.

More and more I'm coming to feel that Sydney Box wasn't a very good executive for Gainsborough. He had good ideas and instincts but seemed to lack a simple overall vision for his films.

Another strong effort from Dors, a screen natural, as the pretty, chubby thing with a twinkle in her eye and a determination to flirt with men. Really the movie should have given her more to do - a rival for Blackman, say. Blackman is solid but hadn't grown into her looks yet.

Movie review - "My Brother's Keeper" (1948) **1/2

A half good movie - a decent enough crims on the run tale with George Cole and Jack Warner escaped from prison. A dumb subplot with David Tomlinson as a reporter whose editor keeps interrupting Tomlinson's honeymoon Front Page style. Why have this? Why not have them cross with the crooks? Why not have the wife's life in danger?

Films made under Sydney Box at Gainsborough were always half good - they'd have these decent ideas and casts but not be there.

Warner is excellent. Great death running through a bomb field. Decent location work. I love his character and relationship with his exes. Cole is fine - might've been better with a stronger character though. Cole is too wet and weak. It needed a third strong character - not Tomlinson, a driven cop or something like they had in Runaway Train. And a stronger relationship between Cole and Warner.

Movie review - "The Calendar" (1948) **

Edgar Wallace's original play was a hit in 1929 - it may have virtues which escape this sluggish film adaptation.

John McCallum is handsome and tall with an impressive voice but is a limited actor who was exposed here - his drunk actiong especially. I think he would have been fine in war films and dramas supporting a female star but here he's carrying the action.

Greta Gynt is very beautiful and can act. So too Sonia Holm. But I wondered why this was made. It's not exciting. There's not a lot of laughs for a comedy. No thrills for a drama. It's a story.

I so didn't care about this story. I had trouble following it but got the basic gist. I didn't care about any characters.

There's some location footage of Ascot, so if you like horses you could dig it. Diana Dors is in it briefly as a maid - I wish she'd had a bigger part. Like it she'd played the lead and McCallum the object of desire - that would be good,

Sydney Box wasn't a very good studio executive.

Movie review - "Christopher Columbus" (1949) ** (warning: spoilers)

How did Sydney Box manage to blow 500,000 quid on this? There's a few shots of ships, and some costumes but a remarkable lack of spectacle - I guess it's in colour but crappy 40s British colour, some scenes on ships, a few castles. Frederic March is in the title role - why? He was clearly on the decline. They would've been better off using someone local.

It's not an interesting story. Columbus raises money. Flirts with kathleen Ryan in some scenes that were inserted later apparently. Goes to the Indies. Helps start the slave trade. Gets opposition at home. Feels un appreciated. The end. Seriously, that's it - the film just ends.

I'm not a Frederic March fan but even they surely struggle with this. Boring. Not even good to look at. Was Sabatini's original novel any good? Did Sydney Box make any decent films at Gainsborough? I think he was a one picture wonder - The Seventh Veil. I don't mean to be mean, he had a lot of ability, Andrew Spicer wrote an excellent and fascinating book on him but... look at the scoreboard.

Movie review - "Caravan" (1946) *** (re-watching)

These films are fun. Silly but fun. They tried to make them better but didn't understand why they worked and killed the fun.

This has unrealistic sets, which kept the budget down and made the story more believable because it takes place in never never land. 

Stewart Granger is excellent as is Robert Helpmann; Dennis Price imitates James Mason, and isn't as good , but this is one of his better works. Jean Kent is fine - great character but she is second tier. 

Anne Crawford is a debit - I'm sorry she died young in real life, but she is. Her character doesn't help - bland blonde English lady.

We didn't need all those flashbacks at the star, but it moves at a decent clip - English films forgot how to move. It gets Gainsborough requirements - a good guy and a bad guy, both into sex; a good girl and a bad girl; the bad girl isn't really bad but is foreign and sex mad so dies; the good girl suffers but gets the guy. Why was that so hard for Sydney Box to understand?

Movie review - "Here Come the Huggetts" (1948) ***

The Huggetts (Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison) were so well received in Holiday Camp it was decided to give them their own series of which this was first. It's another slice-of-life of the late 40s, based around the adventures of the Huggetts at home. They've got three daughters, but the filmmakers bring in a fourth girl to spice things up, a niece - a good thing too because she's played by Diana Dors who is fantastic and the best thing about the film.

Dors' character is slightly chubby, cheerful, lazy, keen to manipulate Harrison into doing everything for her, slack at work, boy crazy, out for a good time. She does get sexually harrased at work and leched on - she can handle it, but there are overtones (because what if she was the sort of girl who couldn't handle it?) Everyone's got a relative like this - that universal appeal of the character adds immensely to the fun.

The other three daughters are played by Jane Hylton, Susan Shaw and Petula Clark. Clark mainly looks cute and sings one song. Shaw doesn't do much. Hylton has a subplot - her boyfriend Jimmy Hanley (he of the receding hairline) is away and she has a little flirtation with David Tomlinson, whose characterisation is a bit too board - he should have been more real, more of a threat. It's like the actor decided to 'have fun" with the role and director Ken Annakin - whose handling otherwise is very good - couldn't bring him into line, or didn't want to.

The other subplot involves Warner and Harrison camping out to see then-princess Elizabeth get married, which is a lot of fun - and Warner has some issues at work.

Really the film could have done with another really strong subplot to support the one involving Dors  - maybe something more serious - and three stars is possibly too generous but this was a fun film.

Movie review - "Diamond City" (1949) **

The box office success of The Overlanders inspired Gainsborough to try a British Western in South Africa. And you know something? It wasn't a terrible idea. The story of Stafford Parker is an interesting one - a man who set himself up as head of the short-lived Diggers Republic around the time of the diamond rush in the 19th century.

And David Farrar is acceptable in the title role. He was an exciting actor at the time, coming off The Black Narcissus - in an era where so many British leading men were wet, he had a Stewart Granger style swagger. He never made it as a star - in part because he made too many movies like this.

It's a mess. I blame the script which is all over the place. There's too many repetitive scenes where Niall MacGinnis tries to undermine Farrar and Farrar easily beats him. The MacGininis comes back and it starts again. There's also too many repetitive scenes of Farrar giving speeches to extras who cheer.

There's also an unpleasant ending where the black who owns the land turns up with the Boers (MacGinnis) and Farrar scolds him for being a naughty black and that if he goes back on his deals with British and Boers will team up and blow them away.

The film is undercast in key roles. Honor Blackman is far too young to play a Salvation Army officer. Also Diana Dors is too young to play a brassy barmaid. In five to ten years both would have been fine (Dors would have been perfect) but the parts are clearly meant to be played by Phyllis Calvert/Pat Roc/Jean Kent and they should have been.

I guess it's a neat twist that Blackman dumps Farrar for Andrew Crawford... but it kind of makes the whole Blackman-Farrar romance hollow. Also, what are we meant to think about Farrar and Dors - she's so keen for him, and he keeps knocking her back. Why not take her back at the end?

Still, it's fascinating,with British adaptation of Western tropes in South Africa, and its depiction of South African history.

David MacDonald directed a lot of flops in British cinema. This, Bad Lord Byron, Christopher Columbus.

Movie review - "The Wicked Lady" (1946) ****

(originally published for the Blacklist)

Here’s a pitch for an erotic thriller…

Meet Barbara. Twenties. Sexually voracious. Stunning. Emotionally messed up by her mother’s death. Visits her boring best friend from high school who’s in love with an older rich guy. Barbara seduces the old guy, marries him, moves into a mansion.

Barbara gets bored. She gets the hots for a hunky young dude she meets at her own wedding and tries to seduce him. She stops sleeping with her old husband and starts robbing people for kicks and a bit of spare cash. She meets another thief, and they start a torrid affair. A servant of the old guy busts her, but she kills him with poison. She catches her thief lover in bed with another woman, so shoots him dead. She falls in love with the hunky younger dude, and he loves her — but he shoots her while she’s committing a robbery, not realizing it’s the woman he loves. She dies from her wounds. The old guy winds up back with the boring best friend.

Sex, murder, betrayal, robbery, couple swapping, irony…. You can see it, can’t you? In 1993 you’d have Shannon Tweed or Tanya Roberts as Barbara, and Andrew Stevens as one of the male leads.

But it wasn’t made in the 1990s — it was actually shot in 1945 and it was called THE WICKED LADY.

And it was one of the most popular British movies of all time.

THE WICKED LADY was one of a series of films known today as “Gainsborough melodramas.” They made in the 1940s by Gainsborough Pictures, usually set in the past, and turned actors like Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Stewart Granger, and Phyllis Calvert into stars. The plots were full of sex, greed, longing, murder and death. In THE MAN IN GREY (1943) Lockwood sleeps with Mason, the abusive husband of her best friend Calvert, who is actually in love with Granger; Lockwood arranges for Calvert to die, but is killed herself by Mason. In MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS (1944) Calvert is married with a daughter when she discovers she has a split personality that makes her run off to Florence and become the mistress to thief Stewart Granger. In CARAVAN (1946) Stewart Granger loves Anne Crawford but loses his memory and marries gypsy girl Jean Kent.

The films were critically despised and enormously popular (in Britain at any rate — American audiences never much went for them.) Being set in the past allowed not just cool costumes and sets, but enabled a lot of (relatively) daring sexual and political content to get past the censor. This had resonance during the social upheaval of World War II, particularly for female audiences experiencing unprecedented financial and sexual independence at the time.

The stories normally focused around a “good” woman and a “bad” woman, who would drive the action, and gave audiences a choice of who to identify with/fantasize over. The bad woman usually slept around a lot, murdered people and was killed at the end, but she was also (in the better of these films, at least) depicted with some empathy — it was clear she was “that way” for a reason, whether a restrictive society, a cruel husband, love of a dud guy, etc A sympathetic character could still genuinely love the bad girl, as in THE WICKED LADY. And the “good” girl was always shown to have strong sexual drives — she was just better able to control them — and her passivity was normally shown to have bad consequences, eg. sitting back and watching another woman steal your husband. They did a similar good-bad split with their male leads — the good man was dashing but decent and poor, the bad man was cruel and violent but also rich and sexy.

By the late 40s the genre died out as the films became less popular. Its death was helped along by executives and stars embarrassed by the films’ complete lack of critical acclaim, but it has to be admitted that later Gainsborough melodramas movies don’t work as well as the first ones. They were either given the serious, “respectful” treatment and became a lot less fun (e.g. SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS, 1948), or began to focus too much on the male characters (e.g. HUNGRY HILL, 1947, BAD LORD BYRON, 1949) or they were miscast (anything with Dennis Price in a lead), or they were simply ineptly done… For instance JASSY (1947) and THE ROOT OF EVIL (1947), instead of having two female leads, one good and one bad, both feature the one female lead who is a mixture of good and bad, which may be more true to life, but tends to be dramatically unsatisfying and rob the films of narrative drive and conflict.

The films were harder to make well than people realized at the time, or indeed later — for instance, take a look at the Faye Dunaway-Michael Winner remake of THE WICKED LADY (1983.) It adds nudity and violence, including a duel with horsewhips between Dunaway and a topless Mirina Sirtis, but lacks the same energy and focus.

The 1945 WICKED LADY was not robbed when overlooked at Oscar time. It is often silly — practically every scene has a moment which feels like “this is the subtext” is being subtitled on screen. The actors ham it up — Margaret Lockwood’s nostrils literally flare in some scenes. It is not politically correct. There is an unpleasant rape scene.

But it has a plot full of action and incident; it has clearly defined characters who behave logically and contrast in clear ways; it is centered around a fascinating female protagonist who is not likeable but always compelling and whose desires (for sex, love, money, safety) drive the bulk of the story; there are strong male characters (well, two of them). And, for 1945 British cinema, it is extremely erotic — people have sex in fields, cheat on spouses, fall in lust at first sight — and is thrilling. It has integrity. And what your erotic thriller needs as much as eroticism and thrills, is integrity.

Could Margaret Lockwood's career have been saved?

I've been thinking about Margaret Lockwood lately, as you do (okay no one does except me) - in particular, about what went wrong with her career after the triumph of The Wicked Lady. The most popular star in Britain at what was arugably the high point of the British film industry... within ten years her name was thought to repel audiences from Cast a Dark Shadow.

During World War Two Lockwood's resume was full of hits, notably the Gainsborough melodramas - The Man from Grey, Wicket Lady, Love Story. She was also in some well received other kinds of films such as Dear Octopus and I'll Be Your Sweetheart.

Let's look what followed:
*Bedelia (1946) - which could and should have been right her up her alley (she played a murderess) but was hurt by some odd scripting decisions and inadequate casting
*Hungry Hill (1947) - should have been a blockbuster but the film lacked focus - it needed to be about Lockwood's character through and through but instead she pops in and out of it
*Jassy (1947) - did okay at the box office - a half success - but could've done better. Again, the movie lacked focus. Was Lockwood good or evil or what? It felt like a movie that didn't know what it really was.
*The White Unicorn (1947) - I haven't seen this film yet. It's about delinquent girls.It was a melodrama. Didn't sound very exciting.
*Look Before You Love (1948) - I haven't seen this either but it sounds terrible.
*Cardboard Cavalier (1949) - Lockwood tries comedy but instead of using a well worn source material she decides to play foil to Sid Field. It's not a very good movie.
* Madness of the Heart (1949) - not a bad melodrama, though it has a poor rap. Lacks big name co-stars.
*Highly Dangerous (1950) - an attempt to make a Lady Vanishes style film but it never seems sure of her tone.
She then made three poorly received films for Herbert Wilcox, and basically ceased to be a star.

So anyway what happened to Lockwood's career? What could she have done differently?

I'll try not to be too harsh in hindsight here but it seems her main errors were

*Not featuring against bigger stars. Most of her late 40s movies lacked names- no Phyllis Calvert, no Stewart Granger or James Mason. You had people like Denis Price, Dermot Walsh, Griffin Jones, Dane Clark.... very much the second eleven. Nothing wrong with making a trashy movie but the trashier films generally need stars.

*She should have been the focus of more of her films. Hungry Hill and Jassy in particular pulled against the fact they needed to be women's pictures, about women.

*She should've tried Hollywood. I understand her reluctance, but the material was simply better. Interestingly all the big British stars of the late 1940s - Mason, Granger, Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding - suffered when the 1950s came in, in Britain. The only ones to survive were those who went to Hollywood and stayed. (Phyllis Calvert and Patricia Roc gave it a go but didn't stay).

Margaret Lockwood... a big star who should've been a LOT bigger.

Movie review - "Dear Murderer" (1947) *** (warning: spoilers)

Enjoyable, unpretentious British thriller, based on a play - one of those plays about upper middle class couples where the man discovers his wife is cheating and plots to get revenge. There were a bunch of these in the 40s and 50s - Obsession, Dial M for Murder, etc. This is a good one.

Eric Portman is ideally cast as the husband, and Greta Gynt (a bit of a British B movie fave) is his wife. It's got some good twists... Portman gets revenge on Denis Price (a lot more effective in small parts like this one than leads) who has been cuckolding him with Gynt, by killing Price and making it look like suicide. Then Portman finds out Gynt dumped Price and has a new bloke, Maxwell Reed... so could get busted for murder... so he tries to pin it on Reed. Only Gynt really loves Reed and Portman really loves Gynt so both are vulnerable.

Reed and Hazel Court have decent looks - neither is called on to do too much. Jack Warner is ideal as the investigating detective.

It's briskly handled and benefits from not trying to make Portman or Gynt likeable. Solid three act entertainment.

Movie review - "Two Thousand Women" (1944) ***1/2

Actually this is the 60 minute American version called House of 1,000 Women which is a shame but this is still pretty good. It has a strong central idea - an internment camp for British women in occupied France - and an interesting cross section of characters: wise cracking journo Phyllis Calvert, mystery woman Pat Roc who turns out to be a nun (not in this version), stripper Jean Kent, sensible cigarette smoking Renee Houston, Flora Robson and her "companion".

There's good solid conflict - a spy in the camp, some British airmen are shot down and need to escape, giving this a spine. It's very well written by Frank Launder - and directed too, building to an exciting climax at a concert.

Quite sexually frank, with it's stripper character who clearly sleeps with Germans, and a seemingly lesbian couple. The love plots involving Jean Kent and Pat Roc and the airmen feel rushed here - though maybe they were cut out.

There's lots of smoking and women being sensible and British but it's all quite exciting with plenty of movement. I've got to track down the hour-plus version.