Compton Bennett Movies

Richard Greene stars a British flight officer in Beyond the Curtain, while Eve Bartok costars as a German-born airline stewardess. When the stewardess' plane is forced down over East Germany, she is trapped behind the Iron Curtain due to her alien status. Officer Greene bypasses red tape and political haggling, preferring more direct means of rescuing Bartok. Lucie Mannheim and Marius Goring are on hand to lend the exotic mittel-European accents they'd been using in British films for decades.Beyond the Curtain was based on the novel Thunder Above by Charles F. Blair. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The British That Woman Opposite is better known by its American title City After Midnight. Dan O'Herlihy stars as detective Kinross, presently investigating the murder of antique dealer Sir Maurice (Wilfred Hyde-White). The principal suspects are the dead man's son Toby (Jack Watling) and Toby's American fiancee Eve (Phyllis Kirk). Digging a bit deeper, Kinross discovers that Eve's ex-husband Ned (William Franklyn) had a vested interest in a rare snuff box owned by the murder victim--and it's just possible that Eve would have been his accomplice if he he'd wanted to commit the murder. Based on a novel by John Dickson Carr, That Woman Opposite bears some resemblance to the 1962 Kim Novak-Jack Lemmon starrer The Notorious Landlady. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the Ball is a well-mounted (if turgidly paced) filmed biography of legendary British music hall entertainer Vesta Tilley. You may not have heard of Ms. Tilley, but if you've seen Victor/Victoria, you'll have some inkling of the nature of her act. At the peak of her fame at the turn of the century, Vesta was a male impersonator who pretended to be a female impersonator. Pat Kirkwood acquits herself nicely as Ms. Tilley, while Laurence Harvey makes a good early impression as Lord Walter de Frece, Vesta's manager and devoted husband. Other famous showbiz personalities represented in After the Ball include Tony Pastor (played by George Margo), Oscar Hammerstein I (Peter Carlisle), Dan Leno Jr. (Terry Cooke) and George M. Cohan (impersonated by future Dr. Who Tom Baker). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

So Little Time takes so much time to tell its thinnish story. The scene is Nazi-occupied Belgium. Maria Schell plays a proud Belgian aristocrat; Marius Goring is a ruthless but innately decent German colonel who is billeted in Schell's mansion. At first hostile toward each other, the conqueror male and conquered female fall in love. This alliance may be foredoomed, but is fun while it lasts. So Little Time was produced during a period in which German officers were occasionally cast in a sympathetic light (e.g. Erwin Rommel in Desert Fox), but had to die for the sins of Hitler anyway. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM's expensive remake of the 1937 British adventure film King Solomon's Mines stars Stewart Granger as fearless-explorer Alan Quartermaine, and Deborah Kerr as the spunky Irish lass who hires him on to locate her husband. Kerr's spouse has disappeared somewhere in Africa while attempting to unearth the long-lost diamond mines of King Solomon. Quartermaine wants no part of so risky an undertaking until Kerr waves 5000 pounds of sterling under his nose. Coming upon a Watusi tribe, the explorers discover that their taciturn native bearer (Siriaque) is actually a deposed Watusi king, who intends to wrest the throne back from his usurpers. Quartermaine uses his wits to quell the natives and keep his party from being killed on the spot. The group finally reaches King Solomon's Mines, where rests the bones of Kerr's late husband. The ending of this version of King Solomon's Mines doesn't pack the same ironic punch as the climax of the 1937 version, but this MGMization is more concerned with the blossoming romance between the leading man and leading lady than with full fidelity to the H. Rider Haggard novel on which it is based. King Solomon's Mines was filmed on location in Africa, which proved an excellent decision in the long run: for several years afterward, MGM adventure films like Watusi (1959) and Trader Horn (1973) were able to economically lift huge chunks of Technicolor stock footage from King Solomon's Mines. The property would be remade once more in 1985, this time as an Indiana Jones rip-off starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After supervising several of the best "psychological" horror films ever made, producer Val Lewton shifted his base of operations from RKO to Paramount. Lewton's first project at his new studio -- and the last -- was My Own True Love, an uncharacteristically sentimental offering. Based on the novel by Yolanda Foldes, the story focuses on the romantic dilemma facing ex-POW Joan Clews (Phyllis Calvert). On the verge of marrying middle-aged Clive Heath (Melvyn Douglas), Joan is introduced to Heath's war-veteran son Michael (Philip Friend). Sympathizing with Michael's wartime loss of his Malayan wife and child, Joan falls in love with him. Unwilling to betray his own father, Michael elects to commit suicide, but that's not quite how things turn out. My Own True Love is proof positive that romantic melodrama was not Val Lewton's forte. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Daybreak a dark, depressing melodrama, tells the story of Eddie (Eric Portman) an unemployed hangman who marries Frankie (Ann Todd) after meeting her in a bar. The couple live on a barge and one day Portman returns home unexpectedly to finds Frankie in the arms of handsome longshoreman Olaf (Maxwell Reed). A fight ensues, and Eddie is knocked overboard and disappears. Frankie, guilt-ridden, commits suicide, and Olaf is arrested for the murder and sentenced to death as the story concludes in a surprising plot twist. The film, rather long and somewhat labored, is difficult to watch because of its unrelentingly depressing viewpoint, but the performances of Eric Portman and Ann Todd add interest and flavor to an otherwise slow drama. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Having underestimated Hitler in the 1930s, British propaganda specialists spent the early war years insisting they were prepared for any international contingency. Big Blockade was a morale-boosting film produced in cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Welfare. In documentary fashion, the film underlines the importance of the economic blockade which Britain directed against Germany. An all-star cast (Michael Redgrave, Leslie Banks, John Mills, Robert Morley etc.) appears in brief sketches dramatizing the effect of the blockade and the reactions of the British public. While it received good reviews at the time, The Big Blockade quickly fell out of favor once it served its wartime purpose. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide