User Reviews

That is the standard of the dialogue of this risible Hammer "horror". Although acquired for distribution by Columbia it was never shown in the UK or USA,which comes as little surprise.

This must be the only film where Helen Cherry's name was above the title. Her character was said to be thirty years old. In reality she was forty nine.

Hugh McDermott was.well versed in playing in this type of film.

The plot of the film is rather mundane with the Macgiffin being stolen plans.

They are contained in a suitcase which seems to go around like a hot potatoe. Probably the most ludicrous scenes are in a hotel where there is a rather circuitous chase. Though the climax runs it a close second for pure farce.

This film was made in 1964 and whilst procedures for dealing with a contagious disease have improved, one would hope they were not as lax as the first scene in this movie. Conveniently, there are only 3 passengers from the plane brought to the airport manager's office all of which have urgent reasons not to comply with isolation measures (4 other passengers and the infected passenger having been taken to "first aid"- no mention of the cabin crew). Whilst the airport manager and his assistant are explaining the situation, the female passenger manages to climb unobserved through a window in the same room, then conveniently finds the air stewardess's changing room to swop clothes in and safely walks past the obligatory elderly security officer on the main gate. (Why she needed to do this, when the American passenger escapes the airport through a loose paling fence, where an obliging van driver gives him a lift).

By this time, I thought the film was a comedy, particularly after the fake police reached into his pocket and pulled out a conveniently folded roll of money to bribe an airport employee and then the American passenger pulled out a similar roll of money to bribe the same employee! As for the secret agent passenger, his death scene was straight out of a comedy sketch, where he just has time to explain how to unlock the security chain attached to his briefcase and who to take the enclosed documents to, before dying (why he could not just phone his superior to come and collect the secret document would have shortened the film considerably!)

There are many more comedic moments in this short film (fire exit via a small window; the female hiding openly behind a wicker basket; the fake policeman twice showing his gun hand to the American hiding round the corner; the convenient blow torch to be thrown at the leaking oil drums). In fact if this had been billed as a comedy , I would have given this a much higher rating.

Coincidentally, I watched another Hugh McDermott film, "Johnny on the Spot" (1954) in which he used the same trick of pulling the rug from under the baddies feet as he did in this film, 10 years later.