The
Loaded Tourist
The Saint
“The ways
of the ungodly are usually predictable” and run from Rome to Geneva for a
trip around the currency restrictions, planned destination New York.
Oscar Kleinhaus
of the Swiss police, a detective inspector charmingly related to Lang’s
Lohmann and Kras, cracks the case with Templar’s help, a perfect poem.
The
artist’s share of the champers at Piltdown Bay. It never could happen,
says the wife, and is she in for a surprise.
It’s the
grand do and the Countess, Lady Jane Something, a most dreadful snob. When the
roped-off rowdies of the upper crust lay on a shower of bread rolls, the missus
is obliged to see “the lady takes the count”.
Summers’
direction is calm, cool, keen and nothing daunted in this seaside comedy that
is a work of genius.
Crooks
in Cloisters
One for the
critics, who are forever getting the wrong end of the stick (SMALLEST EVER
TRAIN ROBBERY) and polluting the sacred precincts of the Fourth Estate with
their putrid and, as Dali would say, hypocritical
odor.
The story of St
Daniel and the swineherd (“he was one o’ the boys”), or call
it a brand new order on a very old island off Cornwall (cf. Brother Orchid, dir.
Lloyd Bacon).
GINSBERG
ENTERPRISES LTD. SUPPLY THE WORLD—PILFERERS WILL BE SEVERELY DEALT WITH,
forgers, meltdown artists, “soon change the shape o’ these.”
A miracle takes
place, sure as shooting, when one of them doesn’t come a cropper.
“I keep on diggin’ an’ diggin’, Bruvver Walt, but
I never find nuffin’! If there is any
taters in them there ‘ills, it’s gonna
take a steamshovel t’ find ‘em.”
Film4, “bright and amusing”. Empire,
“pitched insecurely between Carry On caper and Ealing comedy.”
David Parkinson (Radio Times),
“cosy comedy”. TV Guide, “a good effort somewhat weighed down by an
underdeveloped script and restrained direction.” Halliwell’s Film Guide, “busy comedy”.
The Vengeance of Fu
Manchu
“A
work of infinite pleasure.”
The opening takes
account not only of Sharp’s The
Face of Fu Manchu but Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate as well.
The
creation of Interpol (“sounds like a patent medicine”), and an
inverted mirror of Hitchcock’s Torn
Curtain.
“The
face of Nayland Smith, the mind of a murderer.”
The
assistant commissioner’s lovely azure 1923 Ballot motorcar. Smith shanghaied. The criminal element worldwide,
the empire of Fu Manchu, “I intend to destroy all those you have cause to
fear, those who have made it their business to fight crime.”
“‘Last
night, in London, Assistant Commissioner Nayland
Smith of Scotland Yard was arrested for murder.’”
“Tch, impossible.”
“But
nonetheless true. There is also a second message. ‘Assistant Commissioner
Nayland Smith left for Shanghai this morning, by
sea.’”
The murder trial
of Denis Nayland Smith.
Howard
Thompson of the New York Times,
“dignified, hilariously restrained”. TV Guide,
“one of the worst.” Halliwell’s
Film Guide, “limp addition”.
“L