The Moonraker ***½ (1958, George Baker, Sylvia Syms, Marius Goring, Gary Raymond, Peter Arne, John Le Mesurier) – Classic Movie Review 3428

Roll up, roll up for director David MacDonald’s British Technicolor action drama The Moonraker (1958), some tasty Fifties-style high adventure and low intrigue in 17th-century merry England, set in October 1651 after the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651 at the end of the English Civil War (1642–1651).

The dashing and jaw-juttingly handsome young George Baker (Nineties TV’s Inspector Wexford) stars in his prime as The Earl of Dawlish, aka The Moonraker, The Royalists’ saviour, helping the King’s son Charles Stuart escape from the Roundheads who want to capture him.

To get the prince to safety in France, the Moonraker arrives at the south coast Windwhistle Inn, where he meets Anne Wyndham, the fiancée of top Roundhead Colonel Beaumont.

Gary Raymond as Prince Charles Stuart.

Director David MacDonald’s 1958 Associated British Picture Corporation studios movie tells an attractive, action-packed, dynamic old-fashioned yarn with a very reliable cast, including Gary Raymond in his first film as Prince Charles Stuart, Marius Goring (Colonel Beaumont) and Peter Arne (Edmund Tyler) as Cromwell’s followers, Sylvia Syms as the heroine Anne Wyndham, and an unexpectedly cast comedy star John Le Mesurier making an effective Oliver Cromwell.

Michael Anderson Jr as Martin Strangeways.

Also in the cast are Richard Leech, Clive Morton, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Patrick Troughton, Michael Anderson Jr as Martin Strangeways, George Woodbridge, Leslie Linder, Julian Somers, Iris Russell, Sylvia Bidmead, Patrick Waddington, Fanny Rowe, Jennifer Browne, Jack May, Edward Dentith and Richard Warner.

Sylvia Syms as the heroine Anne Wyndham.

Screen-writers Robert Hall, Wilfred Eades [Wilfrid Eades] and Alistair Bell keep the screenplay filmic and the director keeps the movie cinematic, even though it is based on a play by Arthur Watkin [Arthur Watkyn]. It is attractively shot at various locations in England, including Lacock in Wiltshire; Leeds Castle, Kent; Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire; Hollingbourne, Kent; St Mary’s Marshes, Kent; and Maidstone, Kent; and at Associated British Elstree Studios, England.

The Moonraker is directed by David MacDonald, runs 82 minutes, is made by Associated British Picture Corporation, is released by Associated British-Pathé (1958), is written by Robert Hall, Wilfred Eades [Wilfrid Eades] and Alistair Bell, based on a play by Arthur Watkin [Arthur Watkyn], is shot in Technicolor by Mutz Greenbaum [Max Greene], is produced by Hamilton G Inglis, and is scored by Laurie Johnson, with Art Direction by Robert Jones.

George Baker MBE (1 April 1931 – 7 October 2011) is best remembered on TV as Tiberius in I, Claudius (1976) and Inspector Wexford in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. But he was also much evident in films such as The Dam Busters, The Ship That Died of Shame (both 1955), A Hill in Korea (1956), The Moonraker, Tread Softly Stranger (both 1958), Goodbye, Mr Chips and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (both 1969) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3428

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/