Echo of Barbara ** (1960, Mervyn Johns, Maureen Connell, Paul Stassino, Ronald Hines, Tom Bell) – Classic Movie Review 13,826

The 1960 film Echo of Barbara is a contrived but acceptable British crime support feature starring Mervyn Johns, Maureen Connell, Paul Stassino, Ronald Hines, and Tom Bell.

Director Sidney Hayers’s 1960 film Echo of Barbara is a short and contrived, but acceptable British black and white crime support feature about a ne’er-do-well (Ronald Hines) who gets a striptease girl (Maureen Connell) to pretend to be his sister Barbara, the daughter of an ex-convict (Mervyn Johns), to grab his robbery haul. Even the old-style plot, based on the 1959 novel by Jonathan Burke, is redolent of its age, so it has its share of nostalgia appeal.

Scheming Mike Roscoe (Ronald Hines) gets new young Soho stripper Paula Brown (Maureen Connell) to pose as Barbara, the estranged long-missing daughter of his crooked father Sam Roscoe, supposedly to return the money he stole and went to prison for, but actually hoping to uncover the whereabouts of stolen money and keep it for himself. But Mike Roscoe is in debt to evil gangster Caledonia (Paul Stassino), and he and his boys Ben (Tom Bell) and Ted (Brian Peck) are following closely to learn the location of the proceeds of the robbery, intending to keep it for themselves.

Echo of Barbara is melodramatic and not always credible but still a reasonably involving and entertaining 1960 British crime thriller B-film, with some good performances to help bail it out, especially Maureen Connell, Mervyn Johns, Paul Stassino and Ronald Hines. Paul Stassino makes a particularly good villain in quite a tour de force. It’s a shame that the film is bit overwrought in places, with the score making it even more overwrought, when something subtler and cleaner would be better. The moderate screenplay by John Kruse is based on the 1959 novel by Jonathan Burke. It starts with a bang in a cramped Soho striptease joint, with an amusing vintage strip turn, but after that it turns into quite a different film.

Main star Mervyn Johns doesn’t appear till 20 minutes into a 58-minute film but then he has a lot to do, and he keeps it as subtle and low key as the script will allow. Maureen Connell is very striking as the stripper who turns out to be the heroine. It’s also nice to see the young Tom Bell as a lecherous crook and Beatrice Varley in her last film as dubious old Mrs Roscoe. There’s plenty of material and talent here for a much better movie, but it’s only an ancient British second feature, and plenty good enough to fill a double bill. It’s easy to watch and easy to quite like too.

It is remastered in 2025 by Renown, and showing on the admirable Talking Pictures TV in the UK.

British actress Maureen Connell (born 2 August 1931) married British film director/ writer/ producer John Guillermin on 20 July 1956. They divorced in 1999.

Cast: Mervyn Johns, Maureen Connell, Paul Stassino, Ronald Hines, Tom Bell, Brian Peck, Eddie Leslie, Beatrice Varley.

Echo of Barbara is directed by Sidney Hayers, runs 58 minutes, is made by Independent Artists, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (UK), is written by John Kruse, based on the 1959 novel by Jonathan Burke, is shot in black and white by Michael Reed, is produced by Arthur Alcott, Julian Wintle and Leslie Parkyn, and is scored by David Lee.

It was shot at Beaconsfield Film Studios, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, in April 1960.

It went on general release in the UK with Midnight Lace.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,826

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