The Hooded Terror

“The greatest crime organization of the century.”

Black robes, black hoods, the Black Quorum.

Death to its opponents, death by assassin or the Death Chamber.

The Snake, its leader, a certain Larron, very rich and, like Sexton Blake, a philatelist.

A charming lady agent of the French Secret Service plays “a lone hand” as Blake does vis-à-vis Scotland Yard, but the two go off for la vie parisienne whilst the authorities pursue the pesky reptile.

Halliwell’s curious remark is “rather unyielding”.

The Face at the Window

The Hitlerian modus operandi is effectively presented, a fierce show, a knife in the back, the glad hand of partnership for victims, fraud, treachery and murder, so le Loup terrorizes Paris in 1880, according to a prefatory title for “this melodrama of the old school”.

It is highly exact in its dramatic style, true to form of course and most demandingly real, that is, serious, and very well filmed, so that it constitutes a progenitor of the Hammer school.

The high regard in which Graham Greene held it, not to mention Halliwell’s Film Guide, was nearly sustained by Tom Milne in Time Out Film Guide, but not by the British Film Institute.

Candlelight in Algeria

Operation Torch requires a military conference in a lonely house on a stretch of beach at Cap Hazard, the German Armistice Commission would like to stop that.

An American girl and an English officer safeguard the roll of film with map and photograph, even to the Casbah.

It begins and ends in the Allied victory.

“Elementary spy thriller”, says Halliwell’s Film Guide, “using modest talents.”