With: Alastair Sim (Harry Hawkins), George Cole (William Blake), Terry Thomas (Charles Boughtflower), Jill Adams (Ann Vincent), Raymond Huntley (Sir Gregory Upshott), Colin Gordon (Reginald Willoughby-Cruft), Avril Angers  (Marigold), Dora Bryan (Lily)
Director:  Robert Day and Basil Dearden (uncredited)
Producers:  Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat
Screenplay: Based on their play Meet A Body, by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat​
Photography: Gerald Gibbs​
REVIEWS
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In the British film (and television) tradition of fictional tales about men behaving badly, this faintly ridiculous film develops a convoluted tale of a failed assassination, a weekend liaison in a seedy hotel, under-dressed pretty young women and romance. It is very much of its time but also belongs to a genre that you might call British Black Humour, producing classics such as Arsenic and Old Lace and Black Adder.  It features British film stars of the day, such as the stately Alastair Sim, gap-toothed Terry Thomas and George Cole (later to star in the TV series Minder). It is not quite Graham Greene-territory (the character names are a give-away) but it likely to have wide audience appeal.
 
--- Geoff Lealand (Hamilton Film Society)
 
A splendid black comedy, adapted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat from their own play Meet a Body. Sim is up to his old tricks as a timid watchmaker who is a professional assassin in his spare time. All the right people get bumped off (headmasters, businessmen, and other assorted dictators), and the movie is quite vulgar enough to be funny. It is fascinating to compare Sim's hilarious schizophrenia with Alec Guinness in The Ladykillers. Inside every Englishman there lurks a ruthless criminal, impatient to steal scenes.
 
---Time Out (London)                                                                     
FILM SOCIETY SCREENING

Hamilton
Monday, 7 December, 8:00pm
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