User Reviews

This is a quick running programmer (64 min) from the boys at Hammer Films.

Raymond Young is new doctor who is invited to join a country practice. He jumps at the opportunity and quickly moves out to a small rural village. There he meets his new partner, Patrick Barr, his wife, Jane Baxter, their teenage daughter, Julie Somers, as well as the practice nurse, Jean Lodge. Barr explains that he needs help with the practice. He seems to have caught some sort of "bug" and is feeling run down. Young is soon in the swing of things and becomes popular with Barr's patients. Barr's attacks become more severe and no one seems to know what is causing them. One night when Young is in London on business, Barr gets a call on a premature birth. Though sick, he and Lodge handle the call and deliver the baby. They return to Barr's house and discover Baxter writhing in agony on the floor. An ambulance is called and Baxter is rushed to the area hospital. Barr tells the surgeon he believes it is a burst appendix. Young arrives at the hospital just as the surgeon comes out to tell Barr that his wife has died. A quick autopsy reveals the actual cause of death, arsenic poisoning. The Police are called but Barr seems to have gone missing. The Police drive Lodge and Young back to Barr's house for a look around. Barr is nowhere to be found but the practice drug store has been raided. The Police are sure that Barr is their man and start a district wide search. Young and Lodge figure out where Barr must be hiding. They get there before the police and try to convince Barr to give himself up. Barr tells the pair why he has been sick of late. Barr believes that Baxter had been slowly poisoning him. Every night he felt worse after the nightcap he had with Baxter. The night Baxter had died, Barr had switched glasses. Then the call about the premature birth had come. Now a red herring is thrown in. The daughter, Somers, might actually have been the one to poison Baxter. She was annoyed with her mother because she saw her swapping spit with the local bank manager, Russell Waters. We quickly find out though that it is actually Waters doing the poison act. He was infatuated with Baxter and wanted her for himself. He had arranged a deadly accident some time earlier for his own wife. Now he just needs to eliminate Barr in-order to get at the object of his lust. Waters had a habit of stopping by in the evenings for a drink. That was when he would spike Barr's drink. Of course he did not know Baxter was going to get the final deadly dose. Barr of course had assumed it was Baxter feeding him the arsenic. Young confronts Waters with Somers' story. Waters pulls an automatic and bolts out the door. He grabs up Barr's daughter, Somers, and heads for the hills. She escapes from Waters and leads him on a chase that ends at an old mill. Right behind the two is Young and the Police. Just as Waters is about to finish Somers he slips and falls to a nasty end under a huge water wheel.

Not great, but worth a look.

Patrick Barr had roles in MAN ON THE RUN, THE INTRUDER, BLACK ORCHID, ESCAPE BY NIGHT, LADY OF Vengeance and URGE TO KILL. Young was in THE ASSASSIN and 3 STEPS IN THE DARK.

The film's director was Charles Saunders. Saunders work includes, BLACK ORCHID, MEET MR CALLAGHAN, THE SCARLET WEB, THE NARROWING CIRCLE, BEHIND THEHEADLINES, JUNGLE STREET, NAKED FURY, DANGER BY MY SIDE and KILL HER GENTLY.

The d of p was Walter Harvey. Harvey's noir work was rather extensive and includes, CLOUDBURST, THE ROSSITER CASE, THE BLACK WIDOW, MAN BAIT, WINGS OF DANGER, STOLEN FACE, BAD BLONDE, THE BLACK GLOVE, BLACKOUT, TERROR STREET, 3 STEPS TO MURDER, BLACKOUT, HEATWAVE, 3RD PARTY RISK, RACE FOR LIFE, THE GLASS TOMB, STOLEN ASSIGNMENT, ONE WAY OUT, BLONDE BAIT, THE BIG CHANCE, ACCOUNT RENDERED, END OF THE LINE, SHADOW OF FEAR, JUNGLE STREET, DANGER BY MY SIDE, HI-JACKERS and KILL HER GENTLY.

(b/w)

DEATH OF AN ANGEL is one of many housebound mystery/thriller made by Hammer Films at the beginning of the 1950s. It's not one of their best but has a few moments and cast members of note so it's not all bad either. Patrick Barr is one of my favourite actors of the decade but he doesn't get too much to do here, playing the doctor husband of a woman found poisoned to death. The main lead is a younger doctor who feels more than a little wooden by comparison. Weirdly, Barr's daughter is played by an actress at least twice the age of her character. The film has a few good elements here and there and a nice climax involving an unexpected villain but is otherwise middle of the road.

A young doctor, Dr Chris Boswell (played by Raymond Young), arrives in the small rural English town of Evenbridge to assist the local GP, Dr Welling (played by Patrick Barr), who has been suffering from ill-health. Chris quickly fits into the community and, as a result, gets offered a partnership in Welling's practice, which he accepts. However, tragedy strikes when his new partner's wife, Mary (played by Jane Baxter), is murdered by arsenic poisoning. Welling becomes the Yard's chief suspect since he has disappeared. Chris and the practice nurse, Ann Marlow (played by Jean Lodge), set out to find him and unmask the real killer...

A rather conventional whodunit from Hammer (when they called themselves Exclusive), which is typical of the kind of 'B'-pics they specialised in before achieving global fame with their ground- breaking horror films. Nevertheless, it does have some attractive elements that make it worth seeing. It has a charming feel for the sort of leisurely, idyllic way of rural English life that has long since gone. Cricket on the green, old fashioned family doctors making regular house to house calls and everybody knowing everybody and helping each other out. This enhances the story with its tale of murder, desire and jealousy emerging from this supposedly soothing backdrop, which is atmospherically shot in black and white by Walter Harvey. Frank Spencer's music is also hauntingly beautiful. It is efficiently directed by Charles Saunders, a former editor whose directorial career consisted almost entirely of second features such as this. Acting wise, Young and Lodge offer cheerful and energetic performances as the hero and heroine while Barr offers solid support as the accused man. Baxter is quite good as his wife and Russell Waters also deserves praise as Grannage, the town's bank manager and a former scout leader who is the village bore whom the people still like because he's harmless - or is he? And he has suffered a personal tragedy in his life. However, the best performance here comes from Julie Somers who plays Welling's 14-year-old daughter, Judy, with a real depth of feeling. She is a loving and good-natured girl who is torn by the loss of her mother and, prior to her death, she had suspected (and mistakenly) that she had been having an affair with another man. When she finds out she is heartbroken and devastated by her error of judgement. The film's main drawback is the climax at an old watermill, which suffers from being rather hurriedly shot thus robbing it of some of the suspense it might have had. But, on the whole, as 'B'-pics go, this is far from the worst of them.

This was made by Hammer during their period when they made crime dramas for the bottom half of a double bill.To me this film breaks one of the cardinal rules of such films in that the actual murderer should be amongst the original suspects and not almost brought in as an afterthought.So during the first three quarters of the films running time we are concentrating on the main characters,and then without any warning we find that it is a character who we had not seen since the opening reel,which i found to be rather unsatisfactory.Good to see Katie Johnson 5 years before her late ascent to stardom.Otherwise totally unremarkable film.

When a veteran doctor's wife is murdered, the fingers point all over the various suspects which includes a new doctor at the practice, various neighbors and even the husband and child of the deceased. The murder happens fairly early in the film so the viewer doesn't really get a chance to know the disease or feel any real sympathy when the crime happens, but things are revealed as the film goes on and some interesting minor characters pop in and out to spice things up a bit.

The ensemble of this film is decent but unremarkable outside the presence of Katie Johnson, the sweet old woman from "The Lady Killers", a scene stealer who even Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness in that classic Ealing comedy. Patrick Barr as the quickly widowed doctor, Julie Sommers as the mouthy teen daughter and Jean Lodge as long suffering nurse are worthy of mention, although I found the script to get a bit convoluted and become cumbersome as the film tried to toss all the elements together as the mystery began to get solved. It passes by in just over an hour, but I've seen much better short little quota quickie mysteries that kept my attention a lot more than this did.