Murder at 3am (1955)

The Age of Commercialism

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This film seems to have been made in the smallest film studio ever.In one scene there are 4actors crammed in what seems to be a broom cupboard..When they take to a boat on the river there is no attempt at back projection,merely a black background.The story is feeble and poorly constructed and doesn't make a great deal of sense.Dennis Price is unable to salvage anything from it.

Dennis Price stars as a Scotland Yard police inspector who with sidekick Sergeant Rex Garner gets an assignment to find out who is doing a series of murders on women coming home from nightclubs in and around three o'clock in the morning. As it is barely an hour we don't get too much in the way of character development and no real great reason why the killer is doing what he's doing. These B films as they would be called here are called 'quota quickies' on the other side of the pond. Accent on the quickie here because this film sure has a hurried quality to it. The producers just wanted to get this one off the assembly line and before the British movie-going public in a big hurry.Complicating things is the fact that Price has a sister played by Peggy Evans who is going out with Philip Savile who comes under suspicion. Of course there's a real good reason why he's under suspicion, but I'll save that in case one wants to see it.I have to warn you that the copy I rented from Amazon has some horrible sound quality. I hope the public when they saw it in the theaters wasn't similarly inconvenienced.

Inspector Lawton (Dennis Price) and Sgt Todd (Rex Garner) investigate a series of murders, in which well off young women are being attacked and robbed after leaving London's trendy nightclubs in the wee small hours. Lawton's younger sister, Joan (Peggy Evans) is engaged to be married to a hard up novelist called Teddy King (Philip Saville) and Lawton is shocked when the evidence points to him as being the killer. However, in a showdown at the docks, it transpires that Teddy has a twin brother who turns out to be the culprit.Overall, Murder At 3AM is a competent British b-pic that more than served its purpose at the time - to fill the lower half of the double bill and to enable British studios to fill their quota of movies, which The Cinematograph Act of 1927 passed by parliament stated they had to produce. Films like this became known as quota-quickies for that reason and the greater majority of them had a reputation for being awful but from time to time you did get the odd gem that sometimes outshone the main feature. This particular film was released as the supporting feature to Genevieve in 1953. I remember reading a review for this film somewhere stating that it was among the worst of these films made at that time but having seen it I would say that it was competent and entertaining if only in an undemanding way. Mainly because the story is simply your run-of-the-mill murder mystery and there is nothing for which the film can claim any originality and the motive behind the crimes when it comes leaves you thinking "Yeah so what?" I was attracted to it because of the presence of the late but great Dennis Price who sadly gets very little to do here in the role of a Scotland Yard detective but then again the film did not really demand much. The film's best performance comes from Leonard Sharp in a light comedy relief role as an elderly sailor who assists Lawton in tracking down the killer's hideout on the docks. But Old Skip is only willing to help when he is bribed with brandy from Sgt Lawton's hip flask who is annoyed when at the end of it he has none left for himself. The film was directed by quota-quickie specialist, Francis Searle, who keeps the proceedings moving along at a brisk pace ensuring that the audience was kept mildly entertained for the hour and it does not looked as rushed as a number of these pictures all too often did.

A nice little British thriller with an interesting plot and a good cast but a bit rough round the edges. Look out for (well you can't really miss) the super-sized calendar on the wall in Inspector Lawton's (Dennis Price's) office displaying the date - NOV 11. It was obviously made that way to draw attention to the date, but it's a big TOO big, suggesting that Scotland Yard were all short-sighted. Character actor Leonard Sharp overdoes it somewhat as brandy-guzzling 'Old Skip' who despite his boast that he operates and lives on a boat appears to reside in an old shed. Philip Savile gets to play two parts who are supposed to be half-brothers (not twins) but look exactly the same, except one (the villain) wears a beret - so he must be up to no good! The ending is somewhat rushed, and a bit bizarre, where the bad brother is overpowered the other (even though the brother is wearing handcuffs) and then falls through a window and lands in The Thames but no one bothers to go after him. Perhaps they were planning a sequel?