Edgar Wallace Mysteries (1960–65)

Between September 1960 and October 1965 cinemas in the UK screened 47 films produced by Anglo Amalgamated as part of their Edgar Wallace Mysteries series. These low-budget movies, more or less based on the works of the celebrated mystery author, were, with one exception, produced at Merton Park Studios by Jack Greenwood. They featured solid character actors like Finlay Currie and Bernard Lee (M in the 60s and 70s Bond movies) and such lovely leading ladies as Hazel Court and Moira Redmond as well as emerging young talent like Michael Caine, John Thaw and Harry H. Corbett. And now they are finally being made available on DVD …

The following overview of the series is offered as part of the Tuesday’s Overlooked Film meme hosted by Todd Mason over at his Sweet Freedom blog and you should head over there to see the many other fascinating titles that have been selected.

These films were made as dual-purpose product, to fit both on the second half of a cinema double bill, but also for potential sale to television overseas. In America they were shown as part of Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre / Hour but with other films thrown in that were not strictly speaking part of the series. All but one of the films of the series proper – the exception being The Malpas Mystery (1960), which was farmed out to Independent Artists and produced by Julian Wintle and Leslie Parkyn at Beaconsfield Studios – were made at the small Merton Park studios in London (and on location very nearby). On the other hand, a number of other titles were added, creating confusion about the correct titles within the series. For example, Crossroads to Crime (1960), directed by later Thunderbirds and Supermarionation supremo Gerry Anderson, is often included in the syndication packages but was an otherwise unrelated release given the Wallace imprimatur purely to help with sales. This was also true of Urge to Kill, a largely unremarkable story of a mad killer on the loose, made by veteran filmmaker Vernon Sewell.

Shot in black and white and made on tight schedules, these lively crime movies updated the Edwardian era stories but also overhauled the narratives to the extent that some of the screenplays were in fact original stories with nothing to do with Wallace. Apart from the Wallace name and the title sequence (and even that was dropped by the end), which as we see was occasionally added to unrelated material anyway for sales purposes, the films were mostly one-offs though thematically they have much to tie them together. Indeed, despite cosmetic attempts to reflect early 1960s culture, the social and political attitudes they reflect remained doggedly pre-war with foreigners for instance nearly always untrustworthy if not outright villainous (and that includes Australians). For budgetary reasons they are nearly all set in London and very neart to the studios themselves, though a few did manage to travel a little further afield as in the case of The Man at the Carlton Tower (1961). The closest thing they had to regular characters were a pair of Scotland Yard detectives played by Bernard Lee and Stanley Morgan, who appeared together in the series’ first release, Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960), respectively as Superintendent Meredith and Sergeant Anson and then paired again in Clue of the Silver Key (1961) and The Share Out (1962). However, in Partners In Crime (1961) they played the same characters, but were renamed ‘Inspector Mann’ and (obviously John Ford fans at Merton Park), ‘Sergeant Rutledge’. Morgan appeared in other roles at Merton Park while Lee returned to Superintendent Meredith without his sergeant in Who was Maddox?

The stories are quite varied, from whodunits to forensic procedurals and thrillers encompassing jewel heists, horse race fixing, blackmail, jailbreaks, banknote forgery and other sundry crimes. Even the titles featuring Lee and Morgan can offer quite varied approaches to similar subject matter: Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960) for instance is a fairly complex locked room mystery while Partners In Crime (1961) is a rather plodding story, also focusing on business partners falling out, which then unexpectedly leads to a shootout in a scrapyard with the villains dying in a spectacular truck explosion. Not surprisingly, given the low budgets and short shooting schedules, many of the contributors came from, or were on their way to, television. Directors included such subsequently well-known small-screen practitioners as John Llewellyn Moxey and Gerard Glaister (later producer of such BBC hits as Colditz, Secret Army and Howard’s Way) as well as filmmakers on their way up the theatrical ladder like Clive Donner and Alan Bridges.

Among the most prolific of the writers for the series were such TV writer-producers as Roger Marshall and Richard Harris, while the best known were Philip Mackie (author of the splendid 1970s version of Raffles starring Anthony Valentine as well as the classic TV version of Quentin Crisp’s biography, The Naked Civil Servant) and Robert Banks Stewart, today best known for creating such BBC hits as Shoestring and Bergerac (incidentally, despite what t says in IMDb, because at this time in his career he was usually credited without his middle name, he is the same person credited simply as ‘Robert Stewart’). As the series wound down a few original screenplays were passed off as adaptations but some of the later entries are also the ones with the best reputation, especially Face of a Stranger (1964) written by Hammer stalwart Jimmy Sangster, directed with panache by the up-and-coming John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Jeremy Kemp, Jean Marsh and series regular (in various roles) Bernard Archard.

It is instructive to note that the popularity of the series seems to have come hand-in-hand with a revival of interest in Wallace’s work since at exactly the same time that Anglo-Amalgamated bought the right to some 90 Wallace properties, the Rialto studios in Germany started making their own very distinctive, if often frankly perverse, adaptations starring the likes of Klaus Kinski. The British films offered more straightforward entertainment, taken from some of the lesser-known books and stories, while the Rialto films had rights to some of the best known of the author’s thrillers and then proceeded to do very strange things to them. Anyone interested in these should take a look at the Krimi Corner website at, www.latarnia.com/krimi.htm.

After the series’ successful run in the cinemas, the films eventually started turning up on TV and given the kinds of people working on them, both in front and behind the camera, and the hour-long running times, it’s easy to see why people often remember these more as TV episodes rather than cinema films. At the time though they were considered pretty good box office and were among the most successful of the films of their type being made in Britain. Brian McFarlane and Steve Chibnall in their book The British ‘B’ Film (BFI Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) referred to them as,

“… the most substantial, and probably the most successful, of all, and even constituted a primary attraction for some cinemagoers … [Face of a Stranger (1964)] ranks among the finest of British Bs.”

The cinema/TV confusion persists and may even be perpetuated by the fact that the Wallace series also spawned a popular theme tune in the shape of ‘Man of Mystery’ by Michael Carr and played over a darkly lit revolving bust of Wallace. Initially arranged for flute and later for guitar, the theme was later turned into a hit by the Shadows, reaching number 5 in the UK charts.

Once a TV staple, this series of films have never been made officially available on DVD – until now. Network DVD and Studio Canal (who now owns the Anglo-Amalgamated library, amongst others) are now releasing them all in a series of 7 box sets of three discs each, bringing together all 47 of the films as well as some of the other films made by the Independent Artists company that they were often bundled with. From what I’ve seen of the first two sets, the picture quality is superb, offering the films uncut and in anamorphic transfers that preserve their original 1.66:1 aspect ratio. For further details, visit the Network DVD website at: www.networkdvd.net/

The films

Here is the complete list of the film, including credits for the author of the screenplay and the director. Hyperlinks will be added as I post reviews of individual titles

1960

• The Clue of the Twisted Candle (writer: Philip Mackie, director: Allan Davis)
• Marriage of Convenience (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. Clive Donner)
• The Malpas Mystery (w. Paul Tabori, d. Sidney Hayers)
• The Man Who Was Nobody (w. James Eastwood, d. Montgomery Tully)

1961

• Clue of New Pin (w. Philip Mackie, d. Allan Davis)
• Partners in Crime (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. Peter Duffel)
• The Fourth Square (w. James Eastwood, d. Allan Davis)
• Man at the Carlton Tower (w. Philip Mackie, d. Robert Tronson)
• Clue of Silver Key (w. Philip Mackie, d. Gerard Glaister)
• Attempt to Kill (w. Richard Harris, d. Royston Morley)
• Man Detained (w. Richard Harris, d. Robert Tronson)
• Never Back Losers (w. Lukas Heller, d. Robert Tronson)
• The Sinister Man (w. Robert Banks Stewart [& Philip Mackie], d. Clive Donner)

1962

• Candidate for Murder (w. Lukas Heller, d. David Villers)
• Backfire (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. Paul Almond)
• The Share Out (w. Philip Mackie, d. Gerard Glaister)
• Flat Two (w. Lindsay Galloway, d. Alan Cooke)
• Number Six (w. Philip Mackie, d. Robert Tronson)
• Time to Remember (w. Arthur La Bern, d. Charles Jarrott)
• Locker 69 (w. Richard Harris, d. Norman Harrison)
• Playback (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. Quentin Lawrence)
• Solo for Sparrow (w. Roger Marshall, d. Gordon Flemyng)
• Death Trap (w. John Roddick, d. John Llewellyn Moxey)

1963

• The Set Up (w. Roger Marshall, d. Gerard Glaister)
• The 20,000 Pound Kiss (w. Philip Mackie, d. John Llewellyn Moxey)
• Incident at Midnight (w. Arthur La Bern, d. Norman Harrison)
• On the Run (w. Richard Harris, d. Robert Tronson)
• Return to Sender (w. John Roddick, d. Gordon Hales)
• Ricochet (w. Roger Marshall, d. John Llewellyn Moxey)
• The Double (w. John Roddick & Lindsay Galloway, d. Lionel Harris)
• The Rivals (w. John Roddick, d. Max Varnel)
• To Have and to Hold (w. Jimmy Sangster [as ‘John Sansom’] d. Herbert Wise)
• The Partner (w. John Roddick, d. Gerard Glaister)
• Accidental Death (w. Arthur La Bern, d. Geoffrey Nethercott)
• Five to One (w. Roger Marshall, d. Gordon Flemyng)

1964

• Downfall (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. John Llewellyn Moxey)
• The Verdict (w. Arthur La Bern, d. David Eady)
• We Shall See (w. Donal Giltinan, d. Quentin Lawrence)
• Who was Maddox? (w. Roger Marshall, d. Geoffrey Nethercott)
• Act of Murder (w. Lewis Davidson, d. Alan Bridges)
• Face of a Stranger (w. Jimmy Sangster [as ‘John Sansom’], d. John Llewellyn Moxey)
• Never Mention Murder (w. Robert Banks Stewart, d. John Nelson-Burton)
• The Main Chance (w. Richard Harris, d. John Knight)

1965

• Game for Three Losers (w. Roger Marshall, d. Gerry O’Hara)
• Change Partners (w. Donal Giltinan, d. Robert Lynn)
• Strangler’s Web (w. George Baxt, d. John Llewellyn Moxey)
• Dead Man’s Chest (w. Donal Giltinan, d. Patrick Dromgoole)