Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Robert J. Maxwell There never was an actress like Joan Greenwood. She's the upper-middle-class girl friend of possible maniac John Mills here. And she looks demure as always, giving an impression of being about four feet tall. But she plays it straight as an upright woman, not a fey seductress. She uses a girlish voice instead of that throaty croak, full of implications, we've come to expect. The film demonstrates her range as an actress.And Mills' too. Despite his unprepossessing face, he can be the tortured officer of "Tunes of Glory" or the comic, dim-witted, working-class father of "The Family Way." In the post-war years the Brits produced a number of skilled performers who appeared in one fine movie after another, few duds among them.The movie starts off a bit sluggishly. Mills is released from a psychiatric hospital after suffering a brain injury during which a child in his care was killed. He holds himself responsible and has suicidal tendencies.He finds employment as an industrial chemist in a crummy city and lives in a somewhat shabby rooming house with half a dozen diverse neighbors. After several months of despair he more or less recovers and falls for Joan Greenwood. But one of his friends in a neighboring room, an honest and pretty young lady to whom he lends money, is murdered and suspicion falls on Mills -- the ex wreck.The pace picks up at this point, about a third of the way through, as the police enter the picture. It turns into a murder mystery instead of a melodrama. There are good people, there are wicked people, and there are wicked people who pretend to be good people. The investigations centers on Mills and in fact the film leaves some room for doubt. Hitchcock would have handled it all with aplomb.There is a furious chase towards the end, the solution is achieved, and the final few minutes are thrown away because evidently no one could think of any better ending.

Spikeopath The October man is directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Eric Ambler. It stars John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey, Adrianne Allen and Felix Aylmer. Music is by William Alwyn and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.Following a bus crash that killed a friends child that he was treating to a day out, Jim Ackland (Mills) suffers a brain injury. During his recuperation it's revealed to him that he is prone to amnesia, and even though he's suicidal over the child's death, he's released back into society. Setting up lodgings at a hotel and back to work as an industrial chemist, Jim is functioning well. That is until he financially helps one of the young lady residents of the hotel and becomes the chief suspect when she winds up murdered in a park. Jim has no recollection of committing the crime, but he was in the park…Pulsing with moody atmospherics, this Brit noir – psychological - thriller showcases the best of John Mills and the higher end of the British noir splinter. It's a post war London that's cloaked in shadowy streets, of parks harbouring spectral mists punctured by bulbous lamps, a train station a foreboding but visually stunning presence. Jim Ackland is suicidal and nursing amnesia, yet the hotel where he lives, itself a relic of a London that time forgot, is full of human beings from different ends of the evolutionary scale. It's not a good place for Jim to be, a cuckoos nest of spiteful, suspicious, vengeful, lonely people, Jim in fact, in spite of his problems, appears to be the only sane one there!There is no great "whodunit" to be solved here, some critics have bizarrely complained that the murderer is too obvious! Bizarre because the makers don't try and hide who it is, the film is firmly interested in the human condition, in how members of society react post a heinous crime, and of course how the afflicted antagonist fights his corner when confronted by hostility and his own mental confusion. Roy Ward Baker, for what was his first direction assignment, is more than up for the job of crafting a noir thriller. He has a good eye for the visual traits that often marry up with human feelings or behaviour, of course having someone of Hillier's class on cinematography duty naturally helps him through his debut production.Splendid entertainment. 8/10

Jozef Kafka I first heard of this 1947 British film in one of Leslie Halliwell's books. Written by Eric Ambler and directed by Roy Baker, it's kind of a British answer to Hollywod's noir, essentially a reworking of Grahame Greene's Ministry Of Fear. Chemist (and I do mean "chemist", not pharmacist or apothecary) John Mills blames himself for the death a friend's daughter in a bus crash, which also gives Mills a concussion and tendencies towards blackouts and amnesia. Quicker than you can say "Alfred Hitchcock" Mills is accused of murdering a fellow resident of his boarding house, and poor old John can't remember if he did it or not. What's most fascinating to me is the subtext -- Mills is clearly supposed to represent returning war veterans, but the film's makers were too afraid to have war wounds be the source of his blackouts (even though H'wood had already done it in The Blue Dahlia) and instead resorted to the bus crash contrivance. There is effective direction by Baker (who went to H'wood and made the classic 3D "depthie" Inferno, later returning to England to do A Night To Remember) and Ambler's script is good, with a few surprise scattered throughout.

David (Handlinghandel) The superb John Mills plays a man with a history of emotional imbalance. He moves into a rooming house peopled by the sorts who might be charming in a Barbara Pym novel. Here they are increasingly less charming: There's the classic nosy landlady. There's an elderly resident who begs for more coal on the fire: The way she's written to do this made me think of a leitmotif from an Eliot poem.There's a homely bachelor; there's an attractive young woman involved with a married man. And, there are assorted eccentrics thrown in as well.Mills meets Joan Greenwood, she of the dark, husky voice. And a murder takes place.That's all I will say, lest I give anything at all away: Try hard to see this little beauty of a film, knowing as little of the plot in advance as I did. Indeed, before today, I had never heard of it.If it were an American film of this period it would be called a film noir. It has all the elements but I don't think I'd call it one. It's a psychological thriller, a mystery.The secondary roles are cast superbly in every case. It's tense, filled with fascinating characters -- it lacks almost nothing. And the two stars could scarcely be better.