The Traitor [The Accursed] ** (1957, Donald Wolfit, Robert Bray, Jane Griffiths, Carl Jaffe, Anton Diffring, Oscar Quitak, Rupert Davies, Christopher Lee, John Van Eyssen, Karel Stepanek) – Classic Movie Review 13,801

Donald Wolfit’s deliciously over-the-top performance is perhaps the best reason out of many for watching the 1957 low-budget British murder mystery thriller The Traitor [The Accursed] set at the annual reunion of a fighting force.

Writer/ director Michael McCarthy’s 1957 low-budget British thriller The Traitor [The Accursed] stars Donald Wolfit, Robert Bray, Jane Griffiths, and Anton Diffring, along with Carl Jaffe, Oscar Quitak, Rupert Davies, Christopher Lee, John Van Eyssen, Karel Stepanek, Colin Croft, and Frederick Schiller.

Donald Wolfit’s deliciously large, over-the-top performance is perhaps the best reason out of many for watching this murder mystery set at the annual reunion of a fighting force.

As former resistance fighter Colonel Price, Wolfit greatly enlivens a neatly-plotted low-budget thriller involving a British Second World War wartime band’s yearly convention at an English country house, where it is revealed that they have a Nazi spy traitor in their midst.

Colonel Price, who took over leading the group in 1943 when the man who founded it was murdered by the Nazis, has learned the founder was betrayed by someone in the group, and he intends to find out who.

Who is it and who killed the man with evidence against him?

There are plenty of ripe suspects to catch the attention in the overwrought but pretty tautly done espionage dramatics, and the characters come to life with lively, sometimes succulent acting from an excellent cast.

The Traitor [The Accursed] is directed by Michael McCarthy, runs 88 minutes, is made by Fantur [E J Fancey Productions], is released by New Realm Entertainments (UK) and Allied Artists Pictures (US), is written by Michael McCarthy (original story and screenplay), is shot in black and white by Bert Mason, is produced by E J Fancey, and is scored by Jackie Brown.

The films of Jane Griffiths (16 October 1929 – 11 June 1975): Double Confession (1950), The Gambler and the Lady (1952), The Million Pound Note (1954), The Green Scarf (1954), Shadow of a Man (1956), The Traitor [The Accursed] (1957), Three Sundays to Live (1957), Tread Softly Stranger (1958), The Impersonator (1961), The Third Alibi (1961), The Durant Affair (1962), Dead Man’s Evidence (1962), The Double (1963).

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,801

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