Devil’s Bait **** (1959, Geoffrey Keen, Jane Hylton, Gordon Jackson) – Classic Movie Review 12,829

The attractively odd, fascinating little 1959 British B-movie drama film Devil’s Bait stars Geoffrey Keen, Jane Hylton and Gordon Jackson. It is something completely different, mixing suspense thriller with dark comedy.

Director Peter Graham Scott’s attractively odd, extremely interesting little 1959 film Devil’s Bait stars Geoffrey Keen, Jane Hylton and Gordon Jackson. Starting with a unique story idea, and developing it unusually, it is something completely different, mixing suspense thriller with dark comedy.

Devil’s Bait is a short and compelling British B-movie suspense drama with Geoffrey Keen and Jane Hylton as an English baker and his wife, Joe and Ellen Frisby, who innocently call up the services of a drunken, totally unqualified rat-catcher called Mr Love (Dermot Kelly), to kill the rats that are eating his flour in their storeroom. 

Love uses a loaf tin with a split side to mix his cyanide rat poison at the bakery, then nips off to the local pub for a night’s whisky boozing. Mrs Frisby uses the split tin and inadvertently bakes a poisoned loaf, and later sells it in the couple’s baker’s shop.

[Spoiler alert] Love staggers off from the pub at closing time and is killed in a road accident. His landlady Mrs Tanner (Molly Urquhart) tells the police he was carrying a little bottle of cyanide and used it at Mr Frisby’s bakery. Frisby denies any knowledge to the police, but Mrs Frisby smells the cyanide in the empty tin and a frantic search begins for the poisoned, distinctively mis-shapen loaf.

Mr and Mrs Frisby end up desperately helping police Sergeant Malcolm (Gordon Jackson) to find the loaf that she accidentally baked in the poisoned tin before the buyer eats it and dies. It’s cyanide!

This completely different idea in the original screenplay by Peter Johnston and Diana K Watson ends up fully and tastily baked through an injection of very considerable style and pace. Peter Graham Scott really does manage to build in the suspense and tension that is needed to make this delightfully eccentric idea work. And work it does, quite admirably.

Devil’s Bait is most enjoyable in its unique way as a late Fifties second feature filler film, while the vintage Brit cast is extremely welcome, including several first-class actors of the period, rounding out their characters effectively and entertainingly. Geoffrey Keen and Jane Hylton create ‘real’ characters, and work hard, subtly and convincingly to show the new strains on an already strained marriage, and how a crisis can bring people together. Gordon Jackson doesn’t appear till half way but he is his usual comforting presence. We know it’s all going to end up okay with him on the case.

Glasgow-born Molly Urquhart has a lot to do and is fun as the rat catcher’s tolerantly exasperated landlady Mrs Tanner. Dermot Kelly has most of the first half of the film to himself and he is fun too, particularly in his scenes with Molly Urquhart, eventually literally drinking himself to death. It looks like he died happy though, even if he was still worrying about the unwashed poisoned tin.

There are three nice turns from actresses playing the gossipy local ladies, customers at the baker’s shop: Shirley Lawrence as Shirley, Eileen Moore as Barbara and Noel Hood as Mrs Evans. They handle the film’s comedy elements adroitly. Rupert Davies has virtually nothing to do as the pub landlord, but that’s loads more than Timothy Bateson has. Talent squandered. The film could easily be another 15 minutes long. which would give time for these actors.

Michael Reed’s black and white photography is imaginative and stylish, and William Alwyn’s score is catchy and effective, particularly over the smart-looking opening credits. The film is impeccably made on its small budget, a crafted labour of love (Mr Love, that would be).

Also in the cast are Dermot Kelly, Shirley Lawrence, Eileen Moore, Molly Urquhart, Rupert Davies, Gillian Vaughan, Barbara Archer, Timothy Bateson, Noel Hood, Vivienne Bennett, and Jack Stewart.

Devil’s Bait is directed by Peter Graham Scott, runs 58 minutes, is made by Independent Artists, is released by Rank Film Distributors (UK), is written by Peter Johnston and Diana Watson, is shot in black and white by Michael Reed, is produced by Arthur Alcott (production supervisor), Leslie Parkyn and Julian Wintle, and is scored by William Alwyn.

Release date: December 1959 (UK).

It is made at Beaconsfield Studios, Buckinghamshire, England, with some limited, though effective location filming.

The cast are Geoffrey Keen as Joe Frisby, Jane Hylton as Ellen Frisby, Gordon Jackson as Sergeant Malcolm, Dermot Kelly as Mr Love, Shirley Lawrence as Shirley, Eileen Moore as Barbara, Molly Urquhart as Mrs Tanner, Noel Hood as Mrs Evans, Rupert Davies as landlord, Gillian Vaughan, Barbara Archer, Timothy Bateson, Vivienne Bennett, and Jack Stewart.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,829

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