NOWHERE TO GO

 

It's back to Kino's BRIT NOIR COLLECTION III Blu-ray set, with NOWHERE TO GO, a 1958 Man-On-The-Run story from Ealing Studios. 

The movie opens with an impressive sequence detailing a man breaking into a prison to break another man out. The escapee is Paul Gregory (George Nader) a Canadian who conned an older woman out of her rare coin collection. Gregory sold the coins, then put the money in a safe deposit box, while allowing the law to put him away. Gregory's overall goal is to get out of prison, get the money, and get out of England--but of course, things don't go as planned, as the felon gets himself into more and more trouble. 

NOWHERE TO GO reminded me of the 1950s low budget crime stories made by Hammer Films, mainly due to the fact that it has an underwhelming American-born leading man trying to get out of a desperate situation. The director of NOWHERE TO GO, Seth Holt, would even go on to work for Hammer a number of times. This was Holt's feature film directorial debut (he had mostly worked as an editor), and he brings plenty of style and panache to a very simple tale. Holt probably felt he had to do this, because George Nader shows no charisma, or even likability, as Gregory. If the story had Gregory set up for the crime, or a victim of mitigating circumstances, the viewer might have had more sympathy for his plight, but he's a criminal through and through, and he doesn't seem a very bright one at that. 

This film's supporting cast has several notable names, such as Bernard Lee, Geoffrey Keen, Lionel Jeffries, Andree Melly (THE BRIDES OF DRACULA), and Howard Marion-Crawford (Dr. Petrie in the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu series). Silent film star Bessie Love plays the woman fleeced by Gregory in the beginning of the story, and Maggie Smith gets her first major film role as an upper-class young woman who tries to help Gregory (her character readily admits to having a thing for hard cases). 

NOWHERE TO GO is a very apt title, because with such a dour personality as George Nader in the lead, the movie literally has nowhere to go. It is Seth Holt's direction and the supporting cast that makes NOWHERE TO GO notable.