Alex Deleon image1.jpegHELL IS A CITY, 1959, Director Val GuestVIEWED in London at a special Hammer classics reissue press screening, c. 1996. Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker), a hard-boiled detective stationed in Manchester England, suspects that a ruthless escaped criminal Don Starling (John Crawford) will come back to town to retrieve a cache of stolen jewels he hid there before his conviction. Martineau has problems at home where he and his wife Julia (Maxine Audley) constantly bicker about his role as a cop which monopolizes his time, and their childless marriage. Starling arrives in town as expected and immediately forms a gang to rob a bookmaker Gus Hawkins (Donald Pleasance), to raise enough cash for a clean getaway but what they grab turns out to be a large amount of money in bank marked bills to prevent their theft. Starling kills a young girl during the robbery and dumps the body by the side of the road out in the country but is spotted by Martineau who is hot on his trail following down one hot lead after another. On the run with Martineau in hot pursuit, now wanted for murder, Starling takes refuge at one point hiding in the attic of the bookmaker he robbed (Pleasance) and threatening his philandering wife Chloe (Billie Whitelaw) he once had an affair with. When discovered by Pleasance Starling manages to knock him out with injuries that put him in the hospital. Martineau, following up another hunch, squeezes more information from Hawkins wife Chloe. At a large outdoor gambling game, where some of the tainted money changes hands, Martineau catches up with the accomplices in the robbery and is now just one step behind his quarry. Starling recovers the cache of stolen jewels from a crooked fence (Furnisher Steele) but has to hide in the storeroom upstairs when the police, tipped off, arrive on the scene. Here, in an extremely harrowing sequence which becomes the unforgettable centerpiece of the film, he holds the beautiful blonde daughter of the fence, Silver Steele, (Sarah Branch) hostage, but she is unable to scream for help because she is deaf and dumb. a( What a twist!) ~ As he stalks her around the attic room piled high with furniture, in desperation she manages to knock out a window which draws the attention of the neighborhood. Martineau breaks in and pursues the vicious killer in a final showdown up on the rooftops above Manchester -- the most suspenseful Mother of all rooftop chases ever filmed. At the end Martineau chooses his job over his marriage. In a wistful coda at his favorite saloon he runs into Lucky Lusk (Vanda Godsell) the attractive barmaid he has been flirting with all along, and she offers herself to him full on, but he turns her open ended offer down on the grounds that he is still married. "Well, she says, in wry resignation, "If you ever have a kid name it for me". The Martineau hard boiled cop figure who doesn't mind bending the law to get his man is a predecessor of Dirty Harry by some twenty years and the mean streets of the city of Manchester are portrayed like another main character hovering over the picture. A major city really seen in British films sits for a remarkable portrait. I had seen this movie years ago when it first came out but quickly disappeared. All I remembered was the white knuckle scene in the attic with the vicious killer relentlessly stalking the pathetically defenseless deaf and dumb girl -- every bit as harrowing and suspenseful now as it was back then. BRAVURA filmmaking beginning to end by Val Guest in a classic B/w mold. Unforgettable. The perfect thriller. Stanley Baker, usually seen in meaty supporting roles, never quite became a top star, but was nevertheless one of the best and most businesslike British actors of his time.

gordonl56 HELL IS A CITY - 1960 Hammer films is best known for horror and vampire type fare. But they did produce the odd crime and noir before the swing to the more profitable blood- letting films.Stanley Baker headlines here, as a tough as nails, no nonsense, Detective with the Manchester Police Service. Baker has just been informed that a man, John Crawford, a gangster Baker had sent up the river has escaped from prison. The swine had killed a guard during the escape.Needless to say Crawford heads back to Manchester. He wants to pick up a stash of jewels he has hidden from a previous robbery. He also wants to pull another job to get some readies to blow the country with. A new life somewhere else seems like the ticket.Crawford makes contact with several of his old gang about a job he has figured. They are going to hit a race track odds makers, Donald Pleasence's bag of cash. Crawford knows about this because he used to bed Pleasence's new wife, Billie Whitelaw.The gang pull the robbery but of course they end up killing the young girl carrying the cash. The Police are quickly on the case and pull in all the usual suspects. A little bit of heavy leaning, soon has the Police onto all the "proper" people. Crawford is forced to go to ground as his possible hideouts dry up.This leads to a great chase over the various rooftops and ends with a full-fledged, knockdown, drag out, knuckle exchange on said rooftops. Crawford is corralled and is soon on death row.This is a very good crime/noir film with top work from the entire cast and crew. Director Val Guest hits all the marks squarely in this one. This one has it all, superb b/w photography, good acting, top jazzy score and more than enough violence to go around.A keeper in anyone's book!

Woodyanders Cunning, lethal, ruthless criminal Don Starling (excellently played by John Crawford) escapes from jail and returns to Manchester to perform a robbery. Rugged, no-nonsense, hot-tempered Inspector Harry Martineau (a superbly hard-boiled performance by Stanley Baker) is bound and determined to nab Starling. Things get sticky when Starling kills a 19-year-old girl during the heist and the manhunt becomes a much more deadly pursuit. Writer/director Val Guest keeps the pace rattling along at a brisk clip, maintains an uncompromisingly tough-edged tone throughout, and does an expert job of creating a seedy urban atmosphere. Stanley Black's rousing, swinging jazz score really hits the spot. Arthur Grant's crisp, handsome, agile black-and-white cinematography likewise impresses. The occasional outbursts of raw violence are shockingly brutal. The climactic rooftop chase between Starling and Martineau is genuinely tense and exciting. Baker and Crawford excel in the leads; they receive fine support from Donald Pleasence as irritable book maker Gus Hawkins, Maxine Audley as Martineau's fed-up, neglected, long-suffering wife Julia, Billie Whitelaw as Gus' trampy wife Chloe (she's also Starling's frightened former old flame), Vanda Godsell as sassy bar maid Lucretia "Lucky" Luske, Joseph Tomelty as feisty old duffer Furnisher Steele, and George A. Cooper as petty gambler Doug Savage. A highly atypical Hammer Studios production, this rough and hard-hitting crime thriller winner makes for completely absorbing and satisfying viewing.

mb014f2908 I watched Hell is a City on DVD again the other day and was struck by how fresh and undated the story and acting still appears. It was a breakout Brit film for 1959/60- with its semi-documentary approach to police procedure,meshed with a tough on women approach and attempt to show relationships that don't have happy endings. On the DVD there is an alternate ending shown, which the director Val Guest claims to have no knowledge of at all! It's much weaker i think than Guest's own choice of ending. Stanley Baker is excellent; successfully showing all dimensions to an Inspector's working/personal life; Billie Whitelaw got nominated that year with the BAA for in the Newcomer category and deservedly so. All the support cast flesh out their characters' quirks very well. Actual location shooting (in this case-Manchester) was still quite unusual and there is a world of difference between this and a studio based crime thriller of maybe 10 years before.