Hidden Homicide *** (1959, Griffith Jones, James Kenney, Patricia Laffan, Bruce Seton, Charles Farrell, Peter Carver, Danny Green) – Classic Movie Review 13,765

Griffith Jones stars in Hidden Homicide (1959) as a writer who goes to bed in a London apartment but awakens in a strange countryside house fully clothed with a gun in his hand and a corpse nearby!

Director Tony Young’s bizarre, twisty 1959 black and white second feature mystery thriller film Hidden Homicide stars Griffith Jones, James Kenney, Patricia Laffan, and Bruce Seton, along with Charles Farrell, Peter Carver, and Danny Green. The story starts promisingly with a familiar crime mystery trope: the main character waking up mystified in a baffling, incriminating situation. This time it is a writer who wakes up in a strange location with a gun in his hand and his cousin’s dead body nearby.

Hidden Homicide is an amusingly preposterous, engagingly creaky and unconvincing, old-style 50s British B-movie crime melodrama about a writer called Michael Cornforth (Griffith Jones) who goes to bed in his pyjamas in his London apartment but awakens next day lying on a couch in a strange countryside house fully clothed with a gun in his hand! When he goes to sleep he’s written a life of Shelley, but when he wakens he discovers he’s written a book on British birds. Both are written by M Cornforth. ‘I must have a double or I’m dreaming, I’ve never written a book on birds,’ he muses. Well, best to move on, if you’ve got a gun, you may as well point it as you look around the house.

Then he starts briefly believing the circumstantial evidence that suggests he has murdered his cousin, Martin Cornforth, whose body he has found slumped over a table by a cupboard in the kitchen!! Luckily there’s a couple of women hikers, Jean and Marian (Patricia Laffan, Maya Koumani). on a walking holiday, who turn up seeking shelter from the rain, and are around to find the body and help him prove that it is someone else whodunit. Well, at least the trusting and trusty Jean helps him, but poor Marian is carted off to hospital, done in by seeing the corpse.

Why would Michael let the women into the house when there was a corpse in the kitchen? Maybe he feels lonely, what with sharing a house with a corpse and all. Also they are very alluring. And then he ridiculously allows Marian (Maya Koumani) into the kitchen to make a cup of tea so she is able to find the corpse in one of the kitchen cupboards. How? And why? Or, why and how? Jean believes Cornforth’s tall story almost instantly, after all he’s got rope burns on his wrists and ankles, though the viewer may be more sceptical.

With one of those pleasing old-time casts that might make you want to press the on button, this is a fairly enjoyable if rather foolish and frivolous minor entertainment relic of its era. Director Tony Young helped the film’s producer Bill Luckwell to adapt Paul Capon’s fairly ingenious 1951 novel Murder at Shinglestrand. The film’s lack of logic and credibility might reasonably sink it, but if you go with the flow, it really is quite amusing. The story gets curiouser and curiouser, compelling attention. It gives far-fetched a good name.

It has a nice cast. Griffith Jones is more than entirely pleasing as Michael, using his lofty, shifty persona to quire compelling advantage, Patricia Laffan is brilliantly alluring as the trusting Jean Gilson, Bruce Seton is good as Michael’s affable investigative crime journalist friend Bill Dodd, and Charles Farrell is amusing as the nutty neighbour Mungo Peddy, a dodgy antiques dealer, while James Kenney is a scene-stealer as the devious Oswald Castellan. Danny Green has nothing to do in a single brief scene as the impresario Cliff Darby. Robert Raglan and Richard Shaw convincingly play the coppers Ashbury and Wright.

Hidden Homicide is entirely likeable enough, if not convincing enough, but deserves, and gets, an extra star for cheek and chutzpah.

Cast: Griffith Jones, James Kenney, Patricia Laffan, Bruce Seton, Charles Farrell, Peter Carver, Danny Green, John Moore, Richard Shaw, Robert Raglan, Maya Koumani, David Chivers, Norman Wayne, Frank Hawkins, Jan Wilson, Joe Wadham, John Wilson.

Hidden Homicide is directed by Tony Young, runs 72 minutes, is made by Bill and Michael Luckwell Ltd, is released by Rank Film Distributors (UK) and Republic Pictures (US), is written by Tony Young and Bill Luckwell, is shot in black and white by Ernest Palmer, is produced by Bill Luckwell, Michael Luckwell, Derek Winn and Gerald A Fernback (associate producer), is scored by William Trytel (billed as Otto Ferrari), and is designed by C Wilfred Arnold.

Hidden Homicide was released on 25 February 1959 by Rank Film Distributors and often double-billed in the UK with the “A” feature Blind Date (1959), a major Rank release.

It was shot at Merton Park Studios, Kingston Road, Merton Park, London, UK, in November 1957, with some location shooting including outside nearby Wimbledon station.

The cast are Griffith Jones as Michael Cornforth, Patricia Laffan as Jean Gilson, James Kenney as Oswald Castellan, Bruce Seton as Bill Dodd, Peter Carver as Wally Gizzard, Danny Green as Cliff Darby, Charles Farrell as Mungo Peddy, John Moore as the stranger, Richard Shaw as Wright, Robert Raglan as Ashbury, Maya Koumani as Marian Savage, David Chivers as the chemist, Norman Wynne as the innkeeper, Frank Hawkins as Ben Leacock, Jan Wilson as porter, Joe Wadham as Marshall, John Watson as policeman.

Robert Raglan co-starred as Detective Sergeant Wyatt with Bruce Seton in the TV series Fabian of the Yard (1954–56). He played the Police Inspector 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956) in which Patricia Laffan has a sizeable supporting role as Miss Alice MacDonald.

Patricia Laffan (19 March 1919 – 10 March 2014) is best known as the Empress Poppaea in Quo Vadis (1951) and the alien Nyah in Devil Girl from Mars (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,765

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