The girl disappears and the boyfriend won’t talk about it. Isn’t that interesting? Johnny Matlock (Brian Worth) travels to Berlin to help Professor Dohlmann (Frederick Schrecker) leave Germany with his sister but fails to persuade them. He and his girlfriend Diane Grant (Paddy Webster) who is his scientist brother Michael’s (John Horsley) secretary are kidnapped when he returns to London. Private eye Tom Martin aka The Duke (Tom Conway) is enlisted to find them but discovers competing interests are after a formula for an alloy to combat metal fatigue which will assist supersonic flight, including nightclub owner Webb (Bruce Seton) and manufacturer MacAllister (Alexander Gauge). The woman who turns out to be Diane’s sister, Paula (Honor Blackman) might know more than at first appears as everyone tries to get hold of Diane’s handbag and a certain film … I’m just curious. A woman’s privilege. This starts promisingly – outside Berlin’s Hotel Kempinski. Then as is the wont of the low budget production other than some nice night-time tracking shots of streets and a few daytime exteriors of mid-century London it’s confined to bog standard nightclub and apartment sets in Britain. This is brain food/I was hoping it was something to eat. Enlivened by sparky banter between the Duke and his Man Friday the spiv-like Barney (Michael Balfour), as well as some action with ex-boxer bartender Pat (real-life light heavyweight world champion Freddie Mills) it’s rather juvenile stuff and the B movie limitations reduce its value to the Cold War genre. However the use of Conway, Blackman’s youthful appearance (she fluffs a line) and the general conformist milieu in which almost everybody resembles everybody else (Conway’s moustache at least makes him stand out from the crowd) is amusing. There are some genuinely good exchanges by the prolific Norman Hudis writing his first screenplay (from the story by the elusive [Paddy] Manning O’Brine) which combine to make this worth watching. There’s even a knockabout ending. Directed by Henry Cass. I suppose I associate private detectives with trouble
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