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At the registry, Barbara (Jennifer Daniel) impatiently awaits her fiancé Larry (John Cairney) to finally officially tie the knot, and he pretty much arrives the last minute, accompanied by two policemen as he's in jail for murder - but somehow he can give his guards the slip in the registry and locks them in with a key supplied to him by his fiancée. Turns out the whole wedding-to-be was just a set up to spring Larry planned by Barbara's stepdad Sam (Russell Waters), Larry's former cellmate, at whose garage Larry hides out - and plans to get his hands on the loot from the bank job he went to jail for - but seems the woman he's hidden the money with, his ex fiancée Tina (Moira Redmond) has skipped town, and Larry has to break into the very registry he has escaped his guards from to find out Tina has married and moved to the country, married the very man who arrested Larry, John Mandle (John Van Eyssen). So apparently Mandle isn't a quite clean cop himself. And thus, Sam plans a trip to the country.

Inspector Bruce (Harry H. Corbett) meanwhile is rather quick to track Larry back to Sam's garage but misses him by a hair. But when he learns that Larry's going after Mandle, he's quick to conclude that Mandle got himself dirty when arresting Larry. But now it's a race against time to both prevent Larry from (in the worst case) killing Mandle, and capturing both Larry and Mandle - and Larry's not one to be arrested easily ...

Now I freely admit I've never read Edgar Wallace's novel this movie is based on, so I can by no means attest how faithful the film is to its source material, but it sure is a rather unusual Edgar Wallace movie for sure: There's no overblown gimmickry in this one, no over-convoluted plotlines, contrived plot devices, overly eccentric characters, obscenely vast mansions with dungeons, trap doors, and hidden corridors, no sinister butlers, hodded figures or any of that sort. Instead what we have is a very down-to-earth crime drama with shades of film noir (plot-wise, not direction-wise) with believable and relatable characters, told in a very stringent manner and high on tension throughout - and above all it's a really good movie, also thanks to a very solid cast and a grounded directorial effort. So certainly not your typical Edgar Wallace - but a very cool crime drama.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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