THEY CAN'T HANG ME

 

The last (and best) movie in Kino's BRIT NOIR COLLECTION IV Blu-ray set is THEY CAN'T HANG ME, a 1955 suspenseful Cold War tale directed and co-written by the highly underrated Val Guest. 

The film starts out with a very nifty pre-credits sequence in which we see a murder, the capture of the culprit, and his trial, in which he is condemned to death. The murderer is Robert Pitt (Andre Morell), a British civil servant. A few days before his scheduled execution, Pitt demands to see Special Branch Inspector Ralph Brown (Terence Morgan). Pitt tells Brown that he knows the identity of a high-ranking traitor, and this person's plans to upset the world order. Pitt demands to be released from prison before he can divulge this information. Brown decides to go out on his own to find the traitor, using what few clues he can get from Pitt. 

THEY CAN'T HANG ME has a number of rain-slicked darkened street scenes, but it is more a story of espionage than noir. The style that Val Guest used on the first two Quatermass films--stark black & white photography, major use of real locations, and a semi-documentary tone--is present here as well. Terence Morgan's performance as Inspector Brown brings to mind Brian Donlevy's Quatermass also. Morgan isn't as brusque or curt as Donlevy, but his Brown is just as determined to get to the bottom of things--and he doesn't have a problem with circumventing authority to do so. 

Andre Morell doesn't get a lot of screen time as Pitt, but he gets a chance to play a very different type of role than was usual for him. Morell's Pitt is fussy, highly strung, and very emotional (of course the guy is a couple days away from being executed). Pitt is so nervy that one wonders if he's telling the truth about all the secrets he supposedly knows. 

THEY CAN'T HANG ME is fast-paced, and a viewer has to pay attention to what is going on, since there are plenty of revelations and twists. Unfortunately there are periodic interruptions to the plot in the form of Brown's extremely cheerful girlfriend, played by Yolande Donlan....who just happened to be Mrs. Val Guest. 

Val Guest is the most prominent Hammer connection to THEY CAN'T HANG ME, but there are a few others, such as supporting actors Arnold Marle and Fred Johnson, who play a couple scientists caught up in the intrigue. Ursula Howells plays Mrs. Pitt, who has plenty of secrets of her own. 

I don't know if Kino has any other BRIT NOIR COLLECTION Blu-ray sets planned, but the four they have put out are all worthy purchases. I wouldn't call all the movies on them brilliant, but they are for the most part above-average and they feature plenty of actors familiar to film buffs. The main thing about the BRIT NOIR COLLECTION sets is that they provide a bunch of films that are very little known to American audiences--I myself had never seen any of the movies included on any of the four releases.