The Naked Edge (1961)

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A tense little psychological thriller — and it’s Gary Cooper’s last movie!
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UK, US / 97 minutes / bw / Glass–Seltzer, Pennebaker–Baroda, UA Dir: Michael Anderson Pr: Walter Seltzer, George Glass Scr: Joseph Stefano Story: First Train to Babylon (1955) by Max Ehrlich Cine: Erwin Hillier Cast: Gary Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Eric Portman, Diane Cilento, Hermione Gingold, Peter Cushing, Michael Wilding, Ronald Howard, Ray McAnally, Sandor Elès, Wilfrid Lawson, Helen Cherry, Joyce Carey, Diane Clare, Frederick Leister, Martin Boddey, Peter Wayn.

Six years ago, Jason Roote (Boddey), owner and CEO of the Jason Roote Air Freight Corporation, was stabbed to death one night in his office. Only two other employees were on the premises that evening, doing overtime: sales manager George “Cliffe” Radcliffe (Cooper) and lowlier staffer Donald Heath (McAnally). Cliffe heard Roote’s death cry and saw the murderer running away; he and a cop (uncredited) gave chase and

Out of the Shadow (1961)

vt Murder on the Campus
UK / 60 minutes / bw / Border, New Realm Dir & Scr: Michael Winner Pr: Negus Fancey Cine: Richard Bayley Cast: Terence Longden (i.e., Terence Longdon), Donald Gray, Dermot Walsh, Robertson Hare, Diane Clare, Felicity Young, Edwin Styles, Douglas Muir, Jill Hyem, Max Faulkner, Tony Thawnton, Laura Thurlow, Geoffrey Ryan, Ann Sharp, Harold Siddons, Mark Eden, William Ingham, Bill Mitchell.

The third feature movie of Michael Winner’s long and highly prolific directorial career, this potboiler rarely rises above the mediocre. Its opening credits even manage to misspell the name of its leading man (Longden for Longdon); in fact, there isn’t a proper cast list.* The best one can say of the movie is that it reads rather like one of Merton Park’s lesser and more hurried offerings (in fact, it was made at Marylebone Studios); however, like the Merton Park pieces, it somehow manages—despite its stodgy directing and often very flat, uninspired acting—to be quite pleasing to watch.

Journalist Mark Kingston (Longdon) was out of the country when, two weeks ago, his younger brother Tony (uncredited), an undergraduate at the fictional Leicester College, Cambridge, fell from his high rooms in the college into the river Cam, and died. The coroner returned an open verdict; the cops believe it was either accident or suicide, and have closed their investigation. Of course, Mark doesn’t believe one word of that, so as soon as he’s checked in with his boss, Jimmy (Siddons), at the news agency, he heads for Cambridge, booking a room at the Regent Hotel and making a general pest of himself.

Tony Kingston (uncredited) interrupts the killer (Douglas Muir).

A couple of the students at the college tell Mark they did see a man walking on the roof the night that Tony died. Mark learns this when

Whistle Down the Wind (1961)

UK / 96 minutes / bw / Beaver, Allied Film Makers, Rank Dir: Bryan Forbes Pr: Richard Attenborough Scr: Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall Story: Whistle Down the Wind (1959) by Mary Hayley Bell Cine: Arthur Ibbetson Cast: Hayley Mills, Bernard Lee, Alan Bates, Diane Holgate, Alan Barnes, Roy Holder, Barry Dean, Norman Bird, Diane Clare, Patricia Heneghan, John Arnatt, Gerald Sim, Elsie Wagstaff, Hamilton Dyce, Howard Douglas, Ronald Hines, Michael Lees, Michael Raghan. A number of movies have taken as their subject the mythopoeic tendencies of young minds, whereby they can generate fantastical explanations for misunderstood events, or even their own spiritualities—their own mythologies and religions, in fact. The Lord of the Flies (1963), based on the 1954 William Golding novel, is the example that usually springs most readily to mind; others include The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Celia (1988), My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and, arguably, The Babadook (2014). First on the scene, though, and in my view the most effective of all of these—certainly the most poignantly beautiful—is Whistle Down the Wind.

In a small Lancastrian community, the three children of the Bostock farm—Kathy (Mills), Nan (Holgate) and the youngest, Charles (Barnes)—save a trio of kittens, the latest litter of farm cat Dusty, from being drowned in a sack by feckless farmhand Eddie (Bird). Charles tries to fob off one of the kitten on first his pal Jackie Greenwood (Holder) and then a Salvation Army street evangelist (Heneghan). The latter tells him that she can’t take the proffered kitten but that she’s sure Jesus will look after it. From this casual statement flows much later confusion.