Purely Joyful Movie!

Boring

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is a 1960s B movie short. Its a poor film which starts interestingly enough but quickly loses impact.It is low budget, inspires to be some type of American gangster flick and has some straightforward performances, s dicey script with more holes than a colander.It is rather surprising to see Ballard Berkeley better known as the Major in Fawlty Towers as a younger and a rather straight talking newspaper editor.Conrad Phillips plays Moir, an experienced crime reporter who has been pursuing a gangster known as the Duke. The Duke in retaliation fits him up for a train robbery and the police arrest him and he is sentenced to two years in jail. In jail Moir plots his revenge.I have big doubts how the police would think a well known crime reporter can suddenly get involved in a train robbery. As for the revenge plot where the climax takes place in a cold storage warehouse is underwhelming in its sheer hokeyness. I think the film-makers got bored as it suddenly ends.

If you are of a certain age ,like me you will remember films like this on the supporting half of double bills at your local Odeon,Gaumont or ABC.Some of them were quite good.Unfortunately this is not.It is riddled with implausibilities.For budget purposes much of the action is described rather than shown.The initial set up is implausible.After all wouldn't it have been easier for Phillips to have been killed or beaten up rather than locked up in prison.Wouldn't the police have thought that it was rather unlikely to have found some of the stolen mailbags in a car at the station.Phillips would have been sentenced to nearer 10 than 2 years if he had struck down a policeman.Maybe even 30 years as the Great Train Robbers.Then when he gets out he goes to the club and then sees the "witness".I could go on but little point .This is on the same disc as Serena which is a far superior film.

*SPOILERS* Note that the plot summary given by one earlier reviewer is wrong in almost every conceivable respect. Phillips is an experienced reporter who's been hounding nightclub owner/crook Pastell, who in retaliation frames him for a train robbery. Phillips does 20 months for the crime and, on leaving jail, with the help of his cellmate Rees and some powerful refrigeration equipment (and without the help of his ineffectual girlfriend Marlowe) forces Pastell to sign a confession to all his crimes.The script's no masterpiece but what really lets the movie down is the acting. Pastell is quite good and West, as his floozy, is perfectly adequate, but most of the rest are of amateur-theatrical standard.

**ENDING SPOILER(ISH)**Second feature idiocy in which Phillips is an aspiring journalist who inconveniently finds himself accused of a train robbery. With the help of his girlfriend, several rusty cans of worms are opened on the tracks to proving himself innocent.The jury were also unanimous on Phillips' co-screenwriting ability it would seem, as he had not been given the chance to do so before this and was afforded even less chance to do so afterwards.