John H. Roberts Movies

The action in the British Marry Me! centers around a marriage bureau. Utilizing the "omnibus" approach made popular by such films as Quartet, director Terence Fisher relates the stories of four separate marriage-bound couples. The cast (including Derek Bond, Susan Shaw, Patrick Holt, Carol Marsh, David Tomlinson, Zena Marshall, Guy Middleton and Nora Swinburne) is quite appealing, and the production values are of the highest caliber. It would have been nice, though, to spend more time getting to know the individuals involved in the four playlets. Marry Me! is not a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Blanche Fury combined two elements that were surefire moneymakers in postwar Britain: a brooding, Gothic-novel storyline and the dazzlingly handsome Stewart Granger. Heroine Blanche Fury (Valerie Hobson) is an impoverished governess who marries into wealth and sets herself up as the mistress of a vast estate. Enter Heathcliffe-like stable boy Philip Thorn (Granger), who intends to run the estate and eventually claim Blanche as his own. After a torrid, bodice-ripping romance between Blanche and Philip, the story segues into a no-names-please reenactment of the infamous 19th-century "Rush Murder." To "explain" the motives of the characters, the screenwriters deviate from the original Joseph Shearing novel by imposing all sorts of 20th-century "psychological disturbances" upon hero and heroine, with an abruptness and lack of logic that takes the viewer's breath away. Up until the end, however, Blanche Fury is a prime example of high-budget postwar British melodrama. Oddly, despite its $1.5 million price tag, con brio performances and superb Technicolor cinematography, Blanche Fury was a box-office disappointment, bringing an end to the "Gothic cycle" that had begun so promisingly with 1943's The Man in Grey. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Before detective Slim Callaghan (Michael Rennie) can meet with prospective client Col. Stenhurst, he gets drugged, is ordered not to take the case by the colonel's step-daughter, and finds Stenhurst's dead body. So, of course, Callaghan investigates for himself, accurately predicting that several of the relatives will hire him. What he finds is a sordid history of murder and blackmail. Vernon Sewell's Uneasy Terms is a scrambled British attempt at American-style hard boil. ~ Steve Press, Rovi

Future Dr. Who star William Hartnell heads the cast of the 1949 sociopolitical melodrama The Agitator. Set in a British industrial town, the film stars Hartnell as idealistic union organizer Peter Pottinger. His value as an agitator is compromised when Peter falls heir to the very factory where he works. Now that he's "Capital," Peter finds that he hasn't a friend in the world: his old co-workers despise him for what he represents, while his new colleagues can't forget his previous radicalism. Perhaps to avoid movie-industry ramifications, Capital and Labor are treated with equal fairness in The Agitator. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The First of the Few is a dramatization of the life of R.J. Mitchell, the aeronautical engineer who designed the Spitfire fighter plane, which saved England in the Battle of Britain. Produced, directed by, and starring Leslie Howard, with David Niven as a pilot friend of the engineer, the movie starts with the 1940 Battle of Britain and flashes back, as wing commander Geoffrey Crisp (Niven) recounts his friendship with Mitchell and the years from 1918 to 1937, across which he helped move aviation into the modern age -- starting with racing competitions after the First World War, Mitchell is depicted as a design visionary, perceiving both the possibility and then the desperate need for faster and better aircraft. The latter becomes a matter of national survival, and he sacrifices the last years of his life to perfecting the plane that makes him a legend. As with most biographical films of this era, the picture does take some liberties with fact -- Mitchell did not spend time watching and talking dreamily of birds in flight, and comparing them to the box-like bi-planes of the early 1920s; and he never visited Germany in the early Hitler years and, thus, never heard first-hand hints (or threats) about glider clubs masquerading as training units for military pilots, an event depicted here as his motivation for designing the Spitfire; and the man's own son felt that Robert Donat, rather than Leslie Howard, would have been a more accurate portrayal of Mitchell. But in the main the movie -- which was made with the approval of Mitchell's widow and son, who were present for much of the shooting -- gets the essentials correct, and is surprisingly suspenseful for a bio-pic of this type. As a result of the presence of David Niven in the cast, The First of the Few was picked up for distribution in the US by Samuel Goldwyn, who had Niven under contract, and distributed by RKO in an edited 88 minute version under the title Spitfire, by which it is best known in the United States. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

This WWII drama, based on a novel by Oscar E. Millard, takes place in Nazi-occupied Belgium. Andre Delange (Eric Portman) owns a nightclub but is connected with the resistance movement. He used to secretly publish an anti-Nazi paper before the German invasion. Now his underground comrades want to put out the paper again. Delange's assistant publisher is the alluring Julie Lanvin (Phyllis Calvert). But the co-owner of the cabaret, Charles Neels (Peter Glenville), is jealous of Lanvin's relationship with Delange. Neels informs on the publishers, the Nazis raid the newspaper, and the staff is arrested -- but Delange and Lanvin escape. When the two of them manage to put out another issue of the paper, the Nazis believe that they have arrested the wrong people, and they release the staff. Veteran British director Anthony Asquith was at the helm. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Penn of Pennsylvania was the original British title of the economical biopic The Courageous Mr. Penn. Clifford Evans stars as Quaker leader William Penn, who leaves the comfort of his family estate to fight for the rights of his religious brethren. Penn's crusade for spiritual freedom leads him to the New World and the ultimate founding of the colony of Pennsylvania. The film's highlight is Penn's courtroom trial, an admittedly overlong sequence redeemed by the give-and-take between actors Evans and Joss Ambler (as the judge). Deborah Kerr is merely decorative in the thankless role of Penn's wife Gulielma. Honorable in its intentions, Penn of Pennsylvania is compromised somewhat by its minimal production values, including some of the most unconvincing miniature work ever seen on film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A blood-and-thunder horror yarn from the pen of Edgar Wallace, The Door With Seven Locks stars Leslie Banks as a mass murderer with a penchant for puzzles. He lures several heirs to a fortune to their deaths in his mazelike mansion, which is festooned with cryptic clues leading to the location of a valuable treasure. Banks goes too far when he abducts the lovely Lilli Palmer, whose handsome boyfriend invades the mystery house, rescues the girl, and puts an end to Banks' perfidy. Door with Seven Locks was released in the US as Chamber of Horrors. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This film is an adaptation of the Brandon Thomas stage perennial Charley's Aunt, starring bespectacled British radio comedian Arthur Askey. Since Askey's professional nickname was "Big-Hearted Arthur", and since another Charley's Aunt starring Jack Benny went before the cameras in 1941, the title was slightly altered for its limited American release. Otherwise, the story is the same as ever. Dizzy Oxford student Lord Fancourt Babberly (Askey) is persuaded to pose as his pal Charley Wyckham's elderly aunt, in order that Charley's and Jack Chesney's girlfriends will have a proper female escort when they come to visit. The charade is complicated by the presence of Jack's father and of one of the girl's guardians, Stephen Spettigue, both of whom are required by the plotline to "romance" the phoney aunt. Further gumming up the works is the arrival of the genuine Aunt, with Lord Fancourt Babberly's erstwhile lady love in tow. Charley's Big-Hearted Aunt was updated and expanded to allow for the characteristic verbal patter of the then-popular Arthur Askey. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

As early as 1937's Young and Innocent, Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory "fish out of water" scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal everyday event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off. Released in the US as The Girl Was Young, Young and Innocent was based on a novel by Josephine Tey. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Farewell Again is a multiplotted British comedy/drama about soldiers on leave and the people they've left. Given a six-hour pass after a tour of duty in India, several British Tommies (among them Robert Newton, Sebastian Shaw and Anthony Bushell) try to unravel their domestic tribulations before having to ship out again. American expatriate Tim Whelan was the directorial hand who kept the various plot threads from entangling, while another Hollywood vet, James Wong Howe, manned the cameras. The film became instantly dated with the advent of World War II, but in its own time Farewell Again was a box-office smash. The film was issued in the US as Troopship. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This British programmer tells the dark, thrilling tale of a research scientist who resorts to murder to ensure continued funding for his experiments. The killing begins after the slightly insane Dr. Sartorius (Boris Karloff) runs out of money for his experiments with curing paralysis. He is so close to a breakthrough and so desperate for cash that he agrees to kill the wealthy husband of Lady Yvonne Clifford, in exchange for half of her husband's cotton fortune. To do this, he gets hired as Sir Charles Clifford's personal physician and so begins to slowly poison him with injections. Things go awry when the ailing Sir Charles figures out the scam and changes his will to benefit his son from his first marriage. Unfortunately, word gets out and Lady Yvonne changes her deal with Sartorius, claiming that now he must kill the father and the son. But neither the doctor nor the conniving wife count on interference from nurse Eve, who has fallen in love with the son. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this racy comedy, a harem girl desiring to escape her life, stows away on the boat of a wealthy archaeologist as it sails for England where the young nobleman is slated to receive a large inheritance. He soon finds her, and she pleads with him to let her go on to England where she has a few relatives. He agrees, and then allows her to stay at his home during her search. It is not long before they fall in love. Unfortunately, a friend of the archaeologist tells the girl that her lover cannot possibly marry her. The distressed girl run away to Paris with an oily womanizer. Soon her true love follows to save her. He finds her singing in a cafe. He also learns that she and the gigolo were not together long. Casting notions of social convention to the wind, the nobleman asks for her hand. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi