From dives to dames... From cops to killers... (Hell Is A City (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Hell Is A City (DVD)
Date:	08/10/09 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good thriller

Disadvantages: A bit old fashioned

A review of the Cinema Club DVD, which sells for about £7 on amazon.

This is a gritty British crime film from 1959, made by Hammer in Manchester before they settled into churning out horror movies in Berkshire. It's often described as a British film noir, but that feels like wishful thinking - it doesn't have either the look or the feel of noir, a genre that really belongs to America. This has a feel that's unique to British films, and can be seen as a kind of mid-point between Odd Man Out and Get Carter.

An escaped robber, Don Starling, robs a bookies. Things go a bit wrong, and he ends up murdering a girl. Inspector Martineau, a cop trapped in a loveless marriage, is hot on his trail.

The plot is pretty basic, then. It's mostly a police procedural, although we're also privy to Starling's desperate attempts to evade the cops. What's most impressive about this film is the way it takes a pulp fiction plot and sticks it smack bang in the middle of the new wave of British cinema, the supposedly realistic films about working class life that were popular at the time. This feels like it could be set in the same world as Room At The Top.

Set and filmed in Manchester, at a time when the north was becoming fashionable, and featuring some quite salty language for the day ('bastard', 'bloody'), this must have been pretty shocking at the time it was made. Loveless marriages, casual adultery, illicit working class gambling, strong hints of police brutality... this is potent stuff. Only a slightly mawkish romance between Martineau's young sidekick and a pretty deaf girl feels wrong, but it doesn't have enough screen time to ruin things.

The city is used very well as a backdrop for all this (the film is in black and white). There's a great rooftop chase, and I'm sure people who know Manchester will have fun recognising bits of it. The moors are also used very well as a location, with the discovery of a body there bringing real-life tragedies to mind. There's a great gambling sequence (coin-tossing, of all things) on the moors, which must have some basis in reality.

The director is Val Guest, who did a lot of Hammer's black and white films, including the first two Quatermass movies. He isn't really trying for a proper noir feel, but the film looks good and flows nicely. The music does provide a bit more of a genuine noir feel, and wouldn't be out of place in an old Alan Ladd/Veronica Lake movie. It's quite a bleak film, with Martineau's frigid, unsympathetic wife giving him grief while he tries not to succumb to the charms of a local barmaid.

One problem with the film being set in Manchester is that not all the actors are quite up to the accent. In fact some of them don't even try - there are a few that are basically just RP with a slight hint of northern. The star is Stanley Baker as Martineau. A Welsh tough guy actor and a big star in his day, he's good as the driven, unhappy copper, although his accent often veers wildly off into the valleys. The worst offender in the accent stakes is American John Crawford as Starling. Perhaps wisely, he makes no effort at all at the voice, although his performance is good otherwise. But an American robber in Manchester feels out of place, especially as he's described as a childhood friend of Martineau's (a plot strand you feel may have been expanded on if Starling had actually sounded English).

Other cast members have more convincing voices. Donald Pleasence, just starting his career, gives a scene-stealing cameo as the robbed bookie. His slutty wife is played very well by a young Billie Whitelaw. (Pleasence and Whitelaw appeared together in the top-notch Burke and Hare movie The Flesh and the Fiends the same year.) Other well known faces include George A Cooper (he was the caretaker in Grange Hill in the 80s) and, briefly, Warren 'Alf Garnett' Mitchell.

There's an undercurrent of violence in the film, but we see very little. I'm sure this had an X certificate when it was first released, but now it's a safe PG. The picture quality is pretty good on the DVD. An alternative ending is the main extra. On the one hand it's weaker than the original ending, and on the other it's rather shocking as it suggests marital rape as the solution to all life's problems. There's also an excitable trailer.

This is a neglected film that's deserving of a wider audience. It's a tantalising glimpse of what Hammer could have become if the horrors had been less successful (I love the Hammer horrors, but would be the first to admit they're a bit samey. More variety in their films would definitely have been a good thing and might have helped them survive a bit longer). It's surprisingly modern in its outlook and gets away with things I wouldn't have expected to see in a film from its time. It's also very enjoyable.

Summary: A film that more people should see