Ian Hunter Movies

This drama by director Anthony Asquith, a noted lynchpin in British cinematic history, may wear too many hats to be identified as either an adventure, a treatise on non-violence, a psychological study, or whatever. It is all of these things as it starts out in the midst of a revolution in a fictional South American country. David Niven is Tom Jordan, the sometimes disagreeable manager of a British plantation. When it becomes apparent that the leader of the country will be forced to flee for his life, Tom and his wife Claire (Leslie Caron) end up chauffeuring the wounded President Rivera (David Opatoshu) out of there. Tom and Claire are in the midst of marital troubles -- which tend to pale when their car lands in quicksand in a river bed, or when she is unexpectedly threatened by a frightening band of young men while out exploring an abandoned village. And for the pacifist Tom, the worse is yet to come when he is forced to either kill or be killed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Between his internship in Canadian television and his A-feature work on The Ipcress File, Sidney J. Furie directed an old-fashioned horror flick called Doctor Blood's Coffin. Kieron Moore stars as research scientist Dr. Peter Blood, who's been experimenting with heart transplants. Thrown out of Vienna for wishing to move from lab animals to humans, Blood sets up shop in the village of Cornwall. Within a few months of his arrival, several Cornwallians disappear from view. Dr. Blood, you see, has been merrily transplanting hearts in a secret lab located in an abandoned tin mine. Unfortunately, one of his resurrected humans reacts negatively to the operation--especially after he discovers that Blood has been dallying with his wife. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Northwest Frontier was the original British title for Flame Over India. When the Moslems attack a British fortress in colonial India, it is imperative that the local Maharaja's son be taken to safety. The man for the job is commander Kenneth More, who uses a rusty old train for that purpose. Among the other fugitives is the boy's British governess Lauren Bacall and the untrustworthy Herbert Lom. A cat-and-mouse session between good and bad guys segues into a heart-pounding chase through the frontier. Welcome comedy relief is in the hands of I.S. Johar as a grizzled old engineer. It looks like a western and sounds like a western, and the original title Northwest Frontier completes the illusion that we're watching Cowboys and Indians rather than Indians and Moslems. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Oliver Branwell (Jack Hawkins) is an honest, decent man, dedicated to his job as an insurance claims assessor -- until he makes a business call, to assess the damage from a fire, on Tracey Moreton (Dennis Price) and meets Morton's wife Sarah (Arlene Dahl), with whom Oliver had been involved romantically five years earlier. He's thrown off balance by her presence and the seeming friendliness of Tracey and his mother (Violet Fairbrother), both members of the upper-class who have found their lifestyle squeezed and trimmed back by England's dire postwar economy and taxes. But soon, Oliver finds himself in more than a personally awkward position over his friendship with Tracey and lingering attraction to Sarah -- he accidentally uncovers evidence of a massive insurance fraud committed by Tracey, and doesn't want to report it for fear of implicating Sarah. And matters only get worse when Tracey's family home is burned to the ground, in a fire that was definitely arson, killing Tracey (or did it?) in the process. And just when Oliver's dilemma seemingly couldn't get worse, he and the newly-widowed Sarah are married. And then the police start sniffing around, along with a blackmailer (Bernard Miles) who is after a share of the 30,000 pounds insurance that Sarah collected on Tracey's life. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Opening with elaborate preparations for the Queen of England's birthday, The Queen's Guards introduces the audience via voiceover to John Fellowes, a young captain overseeing the participation of the Grenadier Guards in the celebratory parade. A series of flashbacks follow, which fill the viewer in on John's difficult past: a crippled father who is a former Guardsman himself and maintains an obsessive interest with the Guards; a dead brother (also a Guardsman) to whom John is constantly (and unfavorably) compared by his father; and difficulties encountered during his military training when he learns his brother died a coward and caused the death or injury of many of his colleagues (including the father of a girl in whom John has a romantic interest.) Eventually, John is placed in charge of a military operation that has many parallels to the ill-fated one led by his brother, putting him in the position to either repeat his brother's mistakes or atone for them and thereby restore the family's honor. The film mixes shot of actors portraying Guards with footage of actual Guardsmen and soldiers on parade and in action, and also includes some location shots of Battersea Bridge and the Prospect of Whitby. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi

The iniquities of circumstantial evidence are explored in the compact crime drama Eight O'Clock Walk. Because he was the last person to see her alive, and because his playful behavior could be misconstrued as harassment, London taxi driver Tom Manning (Richard Attenborough) is arrested for the murder of a little girl. Manning's American wife Jill (Cathy O'Donnell) has a great deal of difficulty finding a lawyer who will defend her husband in court. She finally settles upon Peter Tanner (Derek Farr), who at first is not entirely convinced that his client is innocent. Eventually he is convinced, and even manages to expose the real murderer, one of the witnesses for the prosecution. Based on a true story, Eight O'Clock Walk is one of the most oft-telecast of 1950s British films, and deservedly so. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

If the plot of the 1993 Kevin Costner film A Perfect World seemed vaguely familiar, perhaps it's because it bears a more than passing resemblance to the British-made 1952 thriller The Hunted (U.S. title: Stranger in Between). Dirk Bogarde stars in this emotional melodrama as an escaped murderer, sloshing through the North Country mud. Bogarde is reluctantly saddled with a fugitive orphan boy (Jon Whitely), who insists upon tagging along. The murderer ends up sacrificing his freedom to rescue the injured boy from certain death. While The Hunted was greeted with moderate enthusiasm in Britain, its virtues were trumped by the French film critics of the era. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Businessman Spencer Tracy is devoted beyond all reason to his son Edward. Tracy lies, cheats, steals, commits arson, and drives two people to suicide in order to smooth Edward's path in life. The boy repays this loyalty by becoming an ungrateful wastrel, who fathers a child out of wedlock and ends up killing himself. After serving a prison sentence for his crimes, Tracy tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered life by searching for Edward's child. Based on the play by Robert Morley and Noel Langley, Edward My Son unsuccessfully retains the play's devices of never showing Edward and of having Spencer Tracy speak directly to the audience. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

High Conquest was a good example of the sort of "prestige" fare that lowly Monogram Pictures hoped to turn out on a regular basis in the postwar years. Adapted from a novel by James Ramsey Ullman, the story centers on Hugo Lannier (Warren Douglas), an American youth who makes it his mission in life to conquer the Matterhorn in Switzerland. Hugo's father had been killed years earlier in a similar attempt, and our hero hopes to honor his father's memory by completing the task. But first, Hugo must overcome his intense dislike of the Alps and his fear of heights-not to mention his fear of fear itself. Top-billed Anna Lee plays Marie, a Swiss girl who believes in Hugo even when he doesn't. Genuine location footage of the Matterhorn is deftly blended with some surprisingly convincing studio mockups. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Margaret Lockwood is cast against type as a "black widow" in the British Bedelia. Wealthy but naïve Charlie Carrington (Ian Hunter) is swept off his feet by the beauteous Bedelia (Lockwood), whose three previous husbands, also wealthy, have died ostensibly of natural causes. While on their honeymoon, the Carringtons are pestered by a young artist named Ben Chaney (Barry K. Barnes), who seems to be falling in love with Bedelia. No matter where they go, the Carringtons are pestered by the persistent Ben. On the verge of tossing the interloper out, Charlie reconsiders-and a good thing, too, since Bedelia has been planning all along to poison him at the first opportunity. In the film's operatic climax, Bedelia discovers that this time she has been set up for a fall! Bedelia is based on a novel by Vera Caspary, of Laura fame. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Andy is ready to graduate from high school, and, trying to be a big man, he hires a pretty woman to be his social secretary. When he fails his finals, he gets help from a kindly faculty member. ~ Rovi