Dick Barton – Special Agent ** (1948, Don Stannard, George Ford, Gillian Maude, Jack Shaw, Geoffrey Wincott) – Classic Movie Review 4713

‘It’s no use Betsy, I can’t stand it any longer, I’m going out to look for Dick.’ Co-writer/ director Alfred Goulding’s 1948 British thriller stars Don Stannard as British Government Special Agent Dick Barton.

Edward J Mason’s Forties wireless detective Dick Barton was an obvious candidate for Hammer Films’ first phase of movie-making – radio spin-offs – before they moved on to TV adaptations and then finally found their true vocation as the house of horror.

In the first of three films, Dick (Stannard) comes to Cornwall with his chums Jock Anderson (Jack Shaw) and Snowy White (George Ford), worries local smugglers, and sets out to stop foreign-country bad guys led by Dr Casper (Geoffrey Wincott) trying to put germ bombs in British reservoirs to poison London’s water supply.

It is really basic, all-too-cheap (£20,000) Boys’ Own stuff that seems to have come from an even much earlier generation still. But at least there is a lot of busy, daft plot, courtesy of the requirements of the BBC serial. This version was also released in cinemas as a serial in six episodes.

Also in the cast are Gillian Maude, Beatrice Kane, Ivor Danvers, Arthur Bush, Alec Ross, Farnham Baxter, Morris Sweden, Ernest Borro, Colin Douglas and Janice Lowthian.

Running 70 minutes, it is written by Alan Stranks, Alfred Goulding and Ambrose Grayson, shot in black and white by Stanley Clinton, produced by Henry Halstead, scored by John Bath, Frank Spencer and Rupert Grayson, and designed by James Marchant.

It is followed by Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949) and Dick Barton at Bay (1950), after which Stannard was killed in a car crash driving back from the wrap party, aged only 33, ending the Dick Barton series. He made just 10 films. Hammer cancelled its planned fourth Barton film, Dick Barton in Africa.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4713

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