Impact (1963)

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Not anything to write home about, but I've always like Conrad Phillips in these budget-flicks from 'Butcher's films' which seem to be doing the rounds on obscure Satellite/Freeview channels and, put out by 'Reknown Films' on DVD.A pretty thin story, of a reporter, Jack Moir (Phillips) who constantly bothers a local hoodlum nicknamed 'The Duke' Dukelow, with bad publicity about him. Needless to say, the latter has him put out of the way by framing him for a mail-train robbery of around £60,000. Moir is sentenced to 20 months in prison and swears/exacts revenge on his release. It's pretty staid to be honest. Two points, as Malcolmgsw points out, that 20 months for robbery of £60,000 especially involving coshing a cop, is a ludicrously short sentence, which would probably start at least eight years plus, even if you didn't serve the full term of it. Another load of rubbish surely is, as has also been said elsewhere, that the police (led by Mike Pratt) would surely not expect him to be hanging around waiting to be pinched with the evidence that was 'planted' on him (that he hadn't known about until they unearthed it). Of course, though, cops are cops 'We're a very narrow-minded lot' as was quoted in the film 'Villain' from Inspector Matthews. From an interest point of view, Ballard Berkeley as Moir's Newspaper boss puts in an early appearance before his 'famous' one as 'The Major' in Fawlty Towers. Anita West, 'The Duke's' resident singer and floosie disappeared as a character actress (sorry, actor) sometime in the seventies/eighties (Crossroads) but puts in a welcome appearance too. A pretty laughable ending is also had to add to the purile writing of the story. Again, bad skiffle and jazz music as well as short back-and-sides and Brylcreem add to the atmosphere but worth it only for a curious look of B-support movie featurettes..

If you are of a certain age ,like me you will remember films like this on the supporting half of double bills at your local Odeon,Gaumont or ABC.Some of them were quite good.Unfortunately this is not.It is riddled with implausibilities.For budget purposes much of the action is described rather than shown.The initial set up is implausible.After all wouldn't it have been easier for Phillips to have been killed or beaten up rather than locked up in prison.Wouldn't the police have thought that it was rather unlikely to have found some of the stolen mailbags in a car at the station.Phillips would have been sentenced to nearer 10 than 2 years if he had struck down a policeman.Maybe even 30 years as the Great Train Robbers.Then when he gets out he goes to the club and then sees the "witness".I could go on but little point .This is on the same disc as Serena which is a far superior film.

**ENDING SPOILER(ISH)**Second feature idiocy in which Phillips is an aspiring journalist who inconveniently finds himself accused of a train robbery. With the help of his girlfriend, several rusty cans of worms are opened on the tracks to proving himself innocent.The jury were also unanimous on Phillips' co-screenwriting ability it would seem, as he had not been given the chance to do so before this and was afforded even less chance to do so afterwards.

This was shown in UK TV in the middle of the night recently (Dec 1998) and I was transfixed by its amateurishness. The fight scenes were so unconvincing, I think I could have arranged them and the script was cliche ridden.It's worth seeing just to see how bad it is.