clanciai Francis Durbridge shines through with his special knack for women mysteries and their magic presence for being absent, you are reminded both of the Paul Temple series and "Melissa" and other spellbinding thrillers with mystical ladies, and here you have two of them murdered while one of them shows up not being murdered at all.The intrigue is spun around a portrait, a weird old man commissions Robert Beatty, a poor painter and brother of the first casualty of the racket, to paint his lost daughter from a picture of her, which task gets him into thorough trouble, especially since one of his earlier models is found murdered in his flat.It's not a bad film although somewhat superficial, of such an intrigue Hitchcock would have brought out a masterpiece, the action is a bit thick as too many things are happening at the same time and too many threads are being woven together in some confusion, as there is another casualty of a man jumping out of a window and lots of fisticuffs which at least twice completely demolishes the painter's entire flat - there is not much space to fight, but they do it the more thoroughly.In brief, a very entertaining thriller with some magic in it, but you would have preferred the first girl (Josephine Griffin) to Terry Moore, but that's a matter of personal taste..

Khun Kru Mark Pretty good crime caper.It's far from perfect and has some silly bits in it, but this movie is still a pretty good ride. It also has a topnotch cast of British and American actors to distract nicely from some otherwise hamfisted fight scenes, a rather muddled and implausible plot and a cheesy ending.It's a supposedly British film but even though it has UK locations it comes across as a fairly typical American noir. The director, Guy Green, is British but clearly took his cues from America for this one. There is also an uncomfortable and misguided attempt to try to capture the mid-50s London scene.Robert Beatty is well suited to his role and doesn't overdo the wrongly suspected victim. Lots of interesting parts for movie buffs and 'face watchers' to enjoy. Even 'Captain Peacock' (Frank Thornton) from Are You Being Served makes a brief appearance! (Those Sunday nights watching PBS weren't wasted after all, eh?)Like I say, there's a certain amount of silliness but it still holds up nicely because of the crisp pacing and superior acting talent on display.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** British film noir having to do with a mysterious postcard sent from Italy that's responsible, in trying to get their hands on it, for some half dozen murders. It's American in London artist Tim Forrester,Robert Beatty, who realizes the importance of the mysterious and missing, in the mail, postcard in that it was sent to him by his brother interpol agent Lou Forrester just before he was killed with a woman hitchhiker in a car crash outside Milan city limits. The shocking news was relaid to Tim by his kid brother commercial pilot Dave Forrester, William Sylvester, who was the last person to see him before his fatal accident.In trying to find out the circumstances behind his brother and hitchhiker's, said to be actress Alison not actor Harrison Ford, deaths Tim soon realizes that there was foul play involved in their so-called car accident! Things get even stranger when the model Jill Stewart, Josephine Griffin,who was posing for Tim is found strangled in his loft making him the #1 suspect in her murder. What makes thing even wilder is that the hitchhiker who supposedly was killed in the car accident together with Lou actress Alison Ford, Terry Moore, turned up alive in London and in fact was the person who discovered the murdered model Jill Stewart's body!****SPOILERS**** All these murders turned out to be connected to a postcard, of a wine bottle, that Lou Forrester sent to his brother Tim just before he was killed. It's discovered on that postcard with invisible ink and under under ultra violet light that Lou listed the members of a diamond smuggling ring that's working out of London that brother Dave is a part of! This leads the police as well as Tim to the person behind all this smuggling and murder known only as "Nightingale". It was "Nightengale" coming out of the shadows or closet in order to silence those, like Tim & Alison, who were on to him that caused his sudden demise. That by him trying to be so overcautious in his operations he in the end blew his cover in trying to murder Alison, that he met back in Italy, whom he thought could connect him with the jewel smuggling ring that he was in charge of. She couldn't but Lou's mysterious postcard certainly could and did!

last-picture-show Originally a television series based on a story by crime writer Francis Durbridge, Portrait of Alison (AKA Postmark For Danger) is a neat thriller with enough twists and turns to keep anyone guessing. An excellent cast, especially Robert Beatty as artist Tim Forrester, who does a good job of underplaying the character, and Alan Cuthbertson in his screen debut, the first in a long line of oily villains. Also watch out for minor uncredited roles by Sam Kydd as a chirpy telephone engineer, Jack Howarth (later to play Albert Tatlock in long running ITV soap Coronation Street) as a hotel porter and Frank Thornton (later to play Captain Peacock in the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served ) as a policeman.