If you love Edgar Wallace, you'll thrill to The Gaunt Stranger. This movie represents not only Wallace at his best, but British film-making at its finest. The cast is superb, with Sonnie Hale, normally a knockabout comedian, not putting a foot wrong as the opportunistic little spiv. He makes the most of his amusing lines and contrives to be both entertaining yet pitiable without overdoing either the humor or the sympathy. Not to be outshone, Wilfrid Lawson who normally plays slow-witted bumpkins turns in a chilling turn here as a killer without any redeeming features whatever except maybe a love for good music.
The girls are excellent too Louise Henry (making her second last movie) and Patricia Roc (right at the start of her sensational career. This was her third film).
I'm tired of reading books by actors and writers who spend half their pages denigrating Walter Forde. In my opinion, Forde was Britain's greatest director. The fact that actors and writers didn't like him is a point in his favor. A director's job is not to make writers and actors happy, but the audience happy and this Forde certainly accomplished in his 55 films career as a director, stretching from 1919 to 1949.
The girls are excellent too Louise Henry (making her second last movie) and Patricia Roc (right at the start of her sensational career. This was her third film).
I'm tired of reading books by actors and writers who spend half their pages denigrating Walter Forde. In my opinion, Forde was Britain's greatest director. The fact that actors and writers didn't like him is a point in his favor. A director's job is not to make writers and actors happy, but the audience happy and this Forde certainly accomplished in his 55 films career as a director, stretching from 1919 to 1949.