Displaying items by tag: Barbara Murray

MYSTERY JUNCTION

UK, 1951, 65 minutes, Black-and-white.

Sydney Tafler, Barbara Murray, Patricia Owens, Martin Benson.

Directed by Michael McCarthy.

An entertaining 65 minutes. This is a film about a detective story writer, recognised in a train by an old lady passenger, asking him about his work, his narrating the story being dramatised.

A prisoner is handcuffed to a police officer on the train, travelling to a court case, his being protected because he has promised to speak out against other criminals. Then, the police assistant is thrown from the train, the killer disguised as the ticket collector.

The writer and the old lady then discover two show girls hiding out in the luggage compartment, the ticket collector knocked out… The passengers in the carriage are all gathered together and, then, they are stranded at the junction because of the weather.

When the lights go out, the police officer is shot dead – and, gradual revelations of the criminal, his associates on the train, a young man who won’t reveal where he was going, confrontations, the gang driving away returning, and the various interrogations and threats, the arrival of the police in the morning, and the revelation of the killer and why.

An amusing postscript when the old lady is reading her novel and looks up at her fellow passenger and sees characters who are lookalikes of some of the villains in the story!

UP  POMPEII

UK, 1971, 90 minutes, Colour.

Frankie Howerd, Patrick Cargill, Bill Fraser, Michael Hordern, Barbara Murray, Lance Percival, Adrian Foster, Bernard Bresslaw, Roy Hudd, Lally Bowers, Kenneth Cranham.

Directed by Bob Kellett.

Comedian, Frankie Howerd, popular on British radio and television, had a successful television series, 14 episodes, in the late 1960s, Up Pompeii. And here is a version made for the cinema screen, with Talbot Rothwell, writer of the Carry on films, having a credit for idea.

The basic idea is humorous enough, Frankie Howard as a slave in Pompeii the year of its destruction, A.D. 79 – but, for film purposes, the Emperor is Nero who reigned 15 years earlier!

Frankie Howerd’s style of comedy was to confide in the audience, looking straight to camera and the audience, plenty of remarks, reminding everyone that this is a film, anticipating action and jokes. The idea here is that there is conspiracy against Nero amongst senators and military of Pompeii. Howerd’s Lurcio works for Ludicrus Sextus (the film’s names of characters rivalling those of the Asterix films), the pompous senator, played with the right kind of satire by Michael Hordern. There is his wife and her ambitions, his young son and his sexuality problems, a clash with a Roman sergeant in the marketplace and the focus on a scroll with a list of conspirators.

Anything could happen – and does.

However, the writers and the cast have drawn on an enormous catalogue of sex jokes. And most of them are here, some very obvious, some familiar – touch of innuendo (though the screenplay is too obvious for innuendo). Some are signalled, Frankie Howard drawing attention to them and reacting sometimes with prudery.

And, looking back, it may be surprising to find such an amount of nudity in British comedy at the beginning of the 1970s – reticence is not the order of the day here.

So, once again, an opportunity to see and gain something of an awareness of popular British comedy in the early 1970s – but, so much depends on whether audiences are fans of Frankie Howerd himself and this kind of style. He then made The Chastity Belt and the World War II farce, Up the Front in the same style.