Bizarre Effort
10 March 2017
William Sylvester stars as Philip Vickers, a man who suddenly returns home after being considered dead for four years. Seems he was on a fishing trip in Portugal of all places and disappeared after going ashore. His memory of events is getting drunk, mugged and imprisoned.

His wife (Paulette Goddard) is having a big party and his three cronies are all in attendance. But one of the cronies is killed that very night. Who did it? All evidence points to Vickers.

When a local detective (Russell Napier) arrives on the scene he's convinced that Vickers is the killer but the wife and pal Bill Saul (Paul Carpenter) keep doing suspicious things. Then there's that creepy Joan (Alvys Maben) lurking in the background.

After another murder, things start getting serious.

Low-budget thrillers has some good points but the many negatives bring it down. The sets are incredibly ugly, and then there's that 50s space-age metal kitchen that keeps shape shifting. Goddard (about 44 at the time) is badly costumed and lit. But the story is pretty good.

Goddard, despite star billing, has little to do. Sylvester and Carpenter are good, and Maben is a scene stealer. Napier is also good as the detective. Don't by fooled by George Sanders' listing. He's not in the film, and the novel her wrote was actually ghost-written by someone else.
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