The Weapon (1956)

Wait till you see what I’ve found! The son of American war widow Elsa Jenner (Lizabeth Scott), young Erik (Jon Whiteley) and his friends are playing in the rubble of bombed-out post-war London’s buildings at Aldersgate when they locate a handgun buried in a brick. The gun goes off and one of the boys is shot and wounded. Erik goes on the run, believing he has killed his friend. A policeman relates the events to his mother and explains the boy who was shot is alive but in hospital. Efforts to locate Erik are aided by US Army Captain Mark Andrews (Steve Cochran) drafted into the investigation by Supt. Mackenzie (Herbert Marshall) of the Yard after it is discovered that the gun which Erik found was used in a murder of an American serviceman during the war. So a dangerous criminal currently unknown is potentially pursuing the boy. Erik goes to the cafe where his mother usually works but she is not there and leaves before he can eat food her colleague is getting for him when a man sees the gun in his pocket. He runs off again just before Elsa arrives with Cpt Andrews. As he gets closer to finding Erik, Andrews encounters Vivienne Pascal (Nicole Maurey) a dance-hall hostess with a connection to the gun’s original owner. But she has all but lost her faith in all things good, declaring I am dead. As Captain Andrews interviews her she is shot through the window by Henry. Andrews pursues him but is overpowered in an empty factory. Disturbed by a policeman Henry jumps out of a window into the Thames. As Andrews continues his investigation into the gun’s whereabouts, Erik’s mother Elsa finally locates her son with the helpful assistance of relative stranger Joshua Henry. He falsely alleges that Erik had stolen a bottle of milk from him. Henry starts wooing Elsa. Meanwhile, Erik sees his photo in the newspapers and continues his way across the city, trying to get food and pick up work as the hunt continues … We abide by their institutions and their methods. Who said the fatalistic world of noir couldn’t have children? This is one of the rare genre entries to break that rule. Children represent hope, an emotion that has no place in the rain slicked streets and smoky clubs with their tough gangsters, private eyes, molls and femmes fatales. And here the same kind of story told in The Yellow Balloon is dramatised with verve and energy. From Blackfriars Bridge to Covent Garden, all around St Paul’s Cathedral and Lambeth, the city is shot schematically and expressively, tracking different characters as the quest story unfolds. Hard man Cochran gets a good role – both detective and romancer, even if at the conclusion he’s late to the party. To be a detective you must by silent and secret. You can’t give anything away. Cole is a true villain, a deceitful crim with murder on his mind, a step away from the hilarity of the jolly spiv he usually essays with the St Trinians girls. The kids here have met a properly evil man who tries to have his way with Elsa to get to Erik. Maurey has a nice sequence in which she gets to utter the truly grim sentiments of the genre, the polar opposite to the mothering instincts of Scott in one of a couple of British films she took at the time. Whiteley is impressive in another of the exceptional child characters he played in his brief career. There’s a tremendously compelling sensibility at work here: the nasty depths of human behaviour represented across the geography of London when it was still murky and foggy, wet and damp, replete with double decker buses, curious onlookers, in the process of rebuilding itself after the War and not quite at one with modernity, filled with the detritus of war for kids to get killed. Incredibly exciting, vividly staged and shot, this is an unusual and excellent film noir, shot around London’s East End and at Nettlefold Studios by Reginald H. Wyer with production design by John Stoll. Thanks to the ever excellent Talking Pictures for screening it. Directed by Val Guest with uncredited work by producer Hal E. Chester who co-wrote with Fred Freiberger. Why don’t you stop working so hard at being tough?

Hammer the Toff (1952)

They weren’t shooting at me. I think they were shooting at you. On the train to the seaside resort of Brighthaven, Richard Rollinson (John Bentley) is sharing a carriage with an attractive young lady called Susan Lancaster (Patricia Dainton). The journey is rudely interrupted when the window of the carriage is shattered by a barrage of bullets. Richard learns from the shaken Susan that she is on her way to join an uncle on holiday and offers to escort her safely to her hotel. They find out that her uncle has disappeared but has left Susan a package. Later, Rollinson happens to overhear a pair of shady characters discussing how to kidnap Susan. She explains to him that her uncle is a scientist who has developed a secret formula which sinister actors are keen to get their hands on. They have been receiving menacing threats hence their flight to Brighthaven. Rollinson consults his old colleague Inspector Grice (Valentine Dyall) of Scotland Yard, who tells him that the evidence is pointing in the direction of a particular man as being responsible for the abduction. Honour among thieves, you know. And I am a thief. Using his friends and contacts in the East End including Bert Ebbutt (Wally Patch) and Jolly (Roddy Hughes), Rollinson investigates, only to be surprised by his findings upon meeting Linnett (John Robinson), the man the coppers are tracking. The idea of a Robin Hood one moment and a murderer the next just doesn’t make sense. Then Susan is kidnapped and all bets are off … All crooks and all crookery concern me. Adapted by John Creasey from his own novel, this British B capitalises on the cut and thrust of a supposed aristo versus the criminal class, a bit of amusing contrasting lingo to dress up a careworn scenario, with a touch of seduction thrown in on the side to make the most of Bentley’s attractive persona and looks. Charming Dainton supplies great spark to the banter with sleuth Bentley but really only punctuates the story. She features at the beginning with the meet cute on the train, forces issues in the middle and at the conclusion, following the inevitable rescue and face-off with the truly vicious enemy who’s framing a Robin Hood-like villain: that character brings real menace to proceedings. The sequel to Salute the Toff, also shot in Summer 1951, with the same director and most of the same cast, it moves at a sprightly pace and it’s a great opportunity to see Bentley in his prime. He spent his latter years married to Meg Richardson (played by Noele Gordon) on legendary TV soap Crossroads (1964-1988). Watch out for Charles Hawtrey as a cashier. Directed by the prolific Maclean Rogers. I am the Hammer #4343 Mondomovies

Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)

Aka Sparrers Can’t Sing. Don’t argue. If I hadn’t have liked you, I wouldn’t have bashed your head in, would I? Cockney merchant sailor Charlie (James Booth) comes home after two years at sea to find his house in London’s Bethnal Green razed and his wife Maggie (Barbara Windsor) missing. She’s now living with bus driver Bert (George Sewell) who has his own wife and Maggie has a new baby – but who’s the daddy?!  Charlie’s friends won’t tell him where Maggie is because he’s famed for his terrible temper. But he finally finds her and, after a fierce row with Bert, they are reconciled… Hey, bus driver! I can go away for *ten* years and get my own wife back! Interesting on so many levels, this, even if its experimental styling doesn’t wear so well with elements of raucous pantomime occasionally diverting the narrative thread. Developed from Stephen (On The Buses) Lewis’s play at director Joan Littlewood’s famed Theatre Workshop at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1960, with improvised contributions from the performers, many of whom are featured here, this has sentimental value as a vehicle for Barbara Windsor (who was discovered by Littlewood), better known from the Carry On series and TV’s Eastenders. She earns her stripes in a heartwarming even startling performance.  It’s notable also as a southern variation on the British New Wave or kitchen sink realist style and for its use of language in conveying a sense of community in that part of London, with plenty of Yiddish and Cockney slang. The city gleams courtesy of Desmond Dickinson’s cinematography and the original score by Stanley Black coupled with original songs (including the title by Lionel Bart, sung by Windsor) marks it out from the pack. It also has a cracking cast of familiar faces including Roy Kinnear, Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy, Harry H. Corbett, Murray Melvin, Victor Spinetti  and Arthur Mullard to name a few. Although the Krays were rumoured to appear in it, and they seem to make a cameo appearance, allegedly they don’t, but the parties celebrating the premiere were held at two of their clubs. Adapted by Littlewood and Lewis, this was Littlewood’s only feature aside from an earlier TVM based on a play by Aristophanes so this is really the only filmed record of her groundbreaking achievements. Shot around Limehouse, Stepney, Shadwell, Millwall, the Isle of Dogs, West Ham, Greenwich, Whitechapel and Blackheath, this gives an authentic picture of the city as the slums were being cleared and its face was quite literally changing. Some interiors were shot at Merton Park Studios. It wasn’t always your fault

Hue & Cry (1947)

Oh, how I loathe adventurous-minded boys. Post-war London. A series of illustrated adventure stories about the character Selwyn Pike in the pages of the Trump comic are a guilty reading pleasure for members of a group of kids, the Blood and Thunder Boys. But their leader Joe Kirby (Harry Fowler), discovers the plotlines of the popular publication are being copied by a crew of local black marketeers to plan and execute their jobs. Joe notifies CID Inspector Ford (Jack Lambert) who scoffs at the notion with humour. Then while at work, Joe tells his boss, Jim Nightingale (Jack Warner) who suggests Joe forget it. Not to be distracted, Joe and another boy visit the stories’ eccentric author, the sinister Felix H. Wilkinson (Alistair Sim). While there, they note that Wilkinson’s wording is being altered somewhere between drafting and actual publication. This leads Joe and his gang on the trail of a female employee Rhona (Valerie White) of the stories’ publishing house. One afternoon, they follow her to a handsome suburban home in a posh part of the city. They break in and tie her up. But an interrogation gets the boys nowhere. Eventually, however, they discover the address of a drop location for the robbers’ stolen loot. Joe and the gang arrange with Wilkinson to create a new adventure story that’s designed to send all the criminals to the drop. Next day, Joe tells Nightingale of the plan. He figures out Nightingale himself is the mastermind behind the local crimes. Later at the warehouse where the stolen loot is kept, Joe comes upon a cache of stolen fur coats. Then, Nightingale appears and threatens the boy. But when other crooks and toughs arrive, they knock Nightingale unconscious. Joe is saved when the crooks are overrun by hundreds of city boys responding to a Blood and Thunder Boys’ pre-arranged radio plea for help … He’s on the lookout for a bright boy like you.  Harry Fowler makes for a charmingly rough hero pitched against Sim and Warner and the street toughs in an evocative picture of a bombed-out London after the war. The scene is set for a standoff using Sim to engineer the evolving plotline in his story in an amusing and rackety suspense-filmed thriller. Tremendous entertainment from writer TEB Clarke, with vivid performances from the kids running amok in the rubble-strewn East End. Ealing Comedy was really up and running in a film whose Expressionist leanings (courtesy of DoP Douglas Slocombe) remind one of Emil and the Detectives. Directed by Charles Crichton. So you’re the young fellow that sees visions on the streets of London?