We Shall See **½ (1964, Maurice Kaufmann, Faith Brook, Alec Mango) – Classic Movie Review 10,838

The 1964 British black and white drama film We Shall See stars Maurice Kaufmann and Faith Brook as a desperately unhappily married couple, driven to destroy one another, in another of the long-running series of Edgar Wallace Mysteries.

Director Quentin Lawrence’s 1964 British black and white drama film We Shall See stars Maurice Kaufmann and Faith Brook as desperately unhappily married couple Evan and Alva Collins, driven to destroy one another, in another of the long-running series of Edgar Wallace Mysteries.

More of a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane-style dark psychological melodrama than a crime film or thriller, it is adapted by Donal Giltinan from a 1926 novel We Shall See! by Edgar Wallace, and is believed to be the first killer bee movie, pre-dating The Deadly Bees by two years.

Faith Brook, the daughter of Clive Brook, gives an extremely strong and powerful performance in an unpleasant, hard-to-play role as Alva (Faith Brook), the viciously controlling, mentally unbalanced wife of civil airline pilot Evan Collins (Maurice Kaufmann), who wants to make him leave his job and quit flying, presumably so he will under her thumb and she can control him better. She keeps running him down, arguing with him, and demeaning him. She is beyond impossible. Crucially, though, she has a phobia about bees, having been badly stung in the past. Alva is described in the film as a witch or a psychopath by other characters who would like her out of the way.

[Spoiler alert] However, someone throws a hive of bees into her hotel bedroom and she is found dead in her bed. Police deduce the would-be killer or killers knew Alva was scared of bees, and of course suspicion naturally falls on the husband Evan, but also on Alva’s caretaker Ludo (Alec Mango) who keeps bees as a hobby, his niece Jirina (Talitha Pol) who is Alva’s housemaid, Greg Thomas (Alex MacIntosh) who is Alva’s brother sniffing around for his share of her fortune, and Rosemary Layton (Bridget Armstrong), the hospital nurse who looks after Evan a bit too lovingly when he has a car crash.

We Shall See is very decently acted, briskly handled, and tautly short at 61 minutes, and it is fairly sharp too, with enough suspense, tension and air of mystery to sustain it on its long build-up to Alva’s inevitable demise, and also it ends up quite satisfyingly with a strong bee-led conclusion, plus an ironic final sting in the tale. We are just waiting to discover who is going to kill Alva, how, and when.

It is Faith Brook’s tour-de-force in a portrait of a woman way beyond the verge that sustains it. She is mad nor’ nor’ west, alright. But Maurice Kaufmann gives pretty much a good as he gets as her none too likeable husband. He is long suffering, but suffers his fool of a wife in a most chilly way. There’s scarcely a likeable character in sight. Everyone is selfish and out for what they can get. The film has an admirably sour view of the world. Cosy middle-class Sixties England eh? None too cosy after all.

[Spoiler alert] It is amusing that the bees turn out to be a MacGuffin. So is the whole airline pilot thing. A series of irrelevancies distracts the eye from what clever Edgar Wallace is actually up to. It is all slight of hand.

Also in the cast are Alec Mango as Ludo, Alex MacIntosh as Greg Thomas, Hugh Paddick as Connell, Talitha Pol as Jirina, Bridget Armstrong as Rosemary Layton, William Abney as Shaw, Donald Morley as Superintendent, Rosemarie Frankland as Waitress, Marianne Stone as Jenny, John Kidd as Solicitor, Stephen Jack as Magistrate, Maxwell Foster as Clerk of the Court, and David Dodimead as Surgeon.

Release date: June 22, 1964 (UK).

We Shall See is directed by Quentin Lawrence, runs 61 minutes, is made by Merton Park Studios, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1964) (UK) and AVCO Embassy Television (US) (TV), is written by Donal Giltinan, based on the novel We Shall See! by Edgar Wallace, is shot in black and white by James Wilson, is produced by Jack Greenwood, is scored by Bernard Ebbinghouse, and is designed by Peter Mullins.

It is one of a long-running series of 47 second feature films based on Edgar Wallace novels, produced at Merton Park Studios for Anglo-Amalgamated and released between 1960 and 1965 in British cinemas. Most of the films played as supporting features on the ABC Cinemas circuit, but ten of them were allocated to the rival Rank circuit. The films were later sold to American TV and screened as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre (1959).

Most of the series has a title sequence with a shadowed bust of Edgar Wallace revolving slowly against a backdrop of swirling mist, accompanied by the ‘Man of Mystery’ theme written by Michael Carr, later recorded by The Shadows, a top five hit record in the UK.

In Britain, the series was shown by ITV, Channel 4 and Bravo and re-shown on Talking Pictures TV from 2018. In July 2012, Network DVD began to release the complete series on DVD.

Titles also include The Malpas Mystery (October 1960), Ricochet (March 1963), Never Mention Murder (November 1964) and Dead Man’s Chest (October 1965).

The films of Quentin Lawrence: The Trollenberg Terror (1958), Cash on Demand (1961), The Man Who Finally Died (1963), We Shall See (1964), and The Secret of Blood Island (1964).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,838

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