Hy Hazell Movies
This offbeat comedy finds Teddy (Marty Feldman) as a television advertising man given a seemingly meaningless project. Slated to make frozen porridge commercials, he comes up with the idea to find an erotic Goldilocks to sell the product. Soon a nationwide search is launched for the female spokesperson. He has trouble at home because his wife is the leader of the "Keep Television Clean" movement. Teddy dreams up a wild bunch of commercials and his daydreams harken back to silent era comedies. This was the first full length film for Feldman, the bug eyed comic who parlayed his television success in Britain into a comedy film career in Hollywood. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marty Feldman, Shelley Berman, (more)
The British town of Warlock is scandalized by Hazell's cottage-turned-tearoom with the local inspector found in a compromising situation and the marriage of Hazell to the mayor. ~ All Movie Guide
In this marital comedy, a married mother and daughter team up to teach their husbands to pay more attention to them. Their scheme to change the men's personality is quite elaborate and comic mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This Ernie Kovacs cult comedy was the last film directed by Mario Zampi and follows the exploits of Aldo Bondi (Kovacs) who earns his living off wealthy widows. When he consoles the beautiful and impoverished Baroness Sandra (Cyd Charisse), he makes the mistake of falling in love with her. That gets him into a complex con game with three other widows and a huge sum of money, meant to be invested to earn a bundle based on the five-hour time difference between the East coast of the U.S. and Europe. Bondi gets into one tight situation after the next, as his loot is stolen by the Baroness and he needs a way to save his skin. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ernie Kovacs, Cyd Charisse, (more)
In this mystery, a movie producer gets bored with his wife and begins an affair with a fiery actress. In the end, he jilts his mistress and returns to his wife. The trouble begins when someone stabs the actress and he is labelled the prime suspect by a detective. Later the producer discovers that the actress is still alive, and that the detective was her husband. A real murder follows and the producer is arrested. His loyal wife launches her own investigation and proves that her husband was innocent. The real killer, the husband of the actress, ends up killed in a car wreck. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stewart Granger, Donna Reed, (more)
In this British comedy, a luckless London window washer loses his job and ends up working in an enormous country estate that boasts more windows than any place in England. Things get worse when the self-centered heir of the manor forces the worker to accompany him to a local hotspot. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Norman Wisdom, Maureen Swanson, (more)
In this comedy, a woman finds herself addicted to auctions and begins bringing the strangest things back to her home. Her husband, ignorant of her passion, begins suspecting her of kleptomania and hires a detective to spy on her. He next sends her to a psychiatrist. After the woman gets wise to the schemes, she reveals the identity of the real thief. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Anastasia is adapted from the popular stage play by Marcelle Maurette. The scene is Paris in the early 1920s. Ingrid Bergman plays a would-be suicide who is rescued by Russian expatriate Yul Brynner. Brynner's motives are far from altruistic; together with a group of Russian cohorts, he hopes to pass Bergman off as Princess Anastasia, the daughter of the late Czar Nicholas. If the conspirators are successful, they stand to collect the ten million pounds held in trust for Anastasia in the Bank of England. The biggest obstacle facing Brynner and company is the surviving Romanov empress (Helen Hayes), who must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bergman is the genuine article. Anastasia represented Ingrid Bergman's return to Hollywood after several years' exile following her "scandalous" affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, (more)
In this light-hearted crime drama, a rivalrous pair of reporters team up to solve the murder of a prominent artist's wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In this drama, the host of a radio crime show finds himself mixed up with real gangsters after he re-creates a notorious murder on the air. He uses his knowledge of criminology to foil the gang's wicked scheme. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Forces' Sweetheart is a British service comedy, perhaps best appreciated by its homegrown audience. Musical comedy favorite Hy Hazell plays Judy James, a performer with ENTA, the British equivalent of the USO. Three goofy soldiers, played by Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Freddie Frinton, vie for the affections of the lovely Judy. The threadbare production numbers feature such specialty acts as The Leslie Roberts Television Girls. Forces' Sweetheart didn't get much play in the US, save for a showing or two on the Late Late Show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Twelve-year old Frankie (Andrew Ray) feels guilty after his best friend falls to his death when they are playing in a bombed-out London building. Len (Sylvester) is a petty thief who has just become a murderer by killing the pub owner in a botched robbery. Frankie and Len's paths cross, and Len learns Frankie's secret then poses as the boy's friend to blackmail the lad into stealing from his parents to finance Len's escape. When the crook suspects that Frankie knows enough to link him to the murder, he tries to silence the boy in a tense, "hide-and-seek" chase played out in a bomb- damaged, highly perilous underground station. The initial idea for this movie may well have been borrowed from The Window (1949), but several intriguing plot twists and effective use of the post-war London location make The Yellow Balloon a unique entertainment in itself. ~ Michael P. Rogers, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andrew Ray, Kathleen Ryan, (more)
The Night Won't Talk is a short but not too sweet British second feature. A beautiful model is murdered; John Bailey, the girl's fiance, is the principal suspect. Later on, suspicion shifts to Bailey's current girl friend. Actress Hy Hazell, playing a seductive sculptress, gets top billing for a seemingly subordinate role. We all know what that means in a murder mystery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Just before directing the comedy classic The Lavender Hill Mob, Charles Crichton dashed off the romantic melodrama Dance Hall. The story takes place in a London dance emporium, frequented by the local working girls. Natasha Parry stars as Eve, whose marriage to Phil (Donald Houston) is imperiled when she takes a different partner for an upcoming dance contest. Her reasoning is that Phil is a lousy dancer, but she loves him all the same; Phil, however, is the jealous type, who doesn't quite see things Eve's way. Among the familiar faces floating by in Dance Hall are Bonar Colleano, Diana Dors, and Petula Clark (yes, her career went back that far). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natasha Parry, Jane Hylton, (more)
Set in a quiet British village, Franchise Affair details the ramifications of a malicious lie. Schoolgirl Ketty Kane (Ann Stephens) hopes to cover up her own misbehavior by claiming that two local women, Marion Sharpe (Dulcie Gray) and Marion's mother (Marjorie Fielding), have kidnapped and abused her. Though the authorities swallow Ketty's story, village lawyer Robert Blair (Michael Dennison) had his doubts. Risking ostracism from the community, Blair quietly sets about to prove the innocence of the two women. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dulcie Gray, Anthony Nicholls, (more)
A bored cabaret chanteuse decides to descend into the world of crime for some much needed excitement in this outing. Along the way she and her partner learn about a conspiracy to steal valuable art and sell it outside the country. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In the Anglo-American The Body Said No!, actor Michael Rennie plays his most challenging role: "himself." The scene is a British TV studio, where Rennie is performing in a live dramatic broadcast. On another set, singer Yolande Donlan mistakes a director's hand signals as "secret code" in a murder plot. Future Dr. Who star Jon Pertwee pops up as a studio watchman. Believe it or not, commercial television had been a reality in Great Britain for 14 years at the time of The Body Said No!'s 1950 release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A heated rivalry between two newspapers provides the basis for this mystery. The trouble begins when a corpse is discovered in the gossip columnist's apartment. It is a puzzling mystery until a rival reporter confesses that he killed the fellow in a drunken rage and hid the body in the columnist's apartment. The despairing killer then throws himself beneath a speeding train. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This romantic comedy is set in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. It tells the story of a professional duelist who is hired by politicians to insult and challenge an important senator. He does this by pretending to have a tiff over a young woman whose father runs the local newspaper. Having no idea that it his daughter who is the bone-of-contention in the duel, he dubs the woman "Madame X. " In the end, the duelist and the girl fall in love, but now he must duel with her father, whom he accidentally insulted. To save his honor, and his life, the hero allows the father to nick him during the contest. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Eythe, Stanley Holloway, (more)
William, the obstreperous Welsh schoolboy created by children's novelist Richmal Compton, appeared in several film incarnations in the 1930s and 1940s, none of them as successful as Compton's original books or the spin-off radio series. William Graham stars as the argumentative title character, who gets off to a bad start in the first scene by stealing his sister's cosmetics and wooden Indians -- after mixing up the shoe polish with the shaving cream. Venturing outside to play with his schoolmates, William decides to become a junior-league "righter of wrongs" by forming the Knights of the Square Table. This leads them to a "haunted" house, where William makes up for his past misdeeds by corralling a gang of crooks. Just William's Luck adheres strictly to formula, pleasing fans of the Compton books but doing nothing to broaden the character's appeal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Graham, Garry Marsh, (more)













