MartinHafer Jim Fleg (George Sanders) is a scumbag who has stolen an original folio of Hamlet AND is now selling forged versions. Can it get worse? Yes, he's a police lieutenant! Unfortunately for Fleg, he trusts a dealer to sell his forgeries...but she is really unscrupulous and stupid and sells one of them to folks Fleg warned her NOT to sell to. Why? Because that agent is purchasing the folio for top Nazis...and if they find out it's a forgery, they won't go to the cops...they'll go for their heads! Soon Hal McByrne (Richard Denning) gets involved in investigating the case and trying to figure out what's really happening.This B has excellent acting, very good writing and better than average production values. If the film weren't only about an hour long, you might swear it's an A picture. Well worth your time.

Alex da Silva George Sanders (Fleg) is a book forger who, in collaboration with phony forgery expert Gail Patrick (Myra), carves out a wealthy lifestyle by selling his "original" Shakespeare copies to the rich. However, Patrick makes a mistake by selling one of these fakes to well-connected Nazi Sidney Blackmer (Cleaver) who demands his money back. At the same time, detective Richard Denning (McByrne) is also sold a fake book and is looking to crack the case. Everyone meets in a library for a showdown.The film starts off alright with Sanders in a typical villainous role, but I'm afraid interest just seeps away. Everything gets complicated, there are far too many characters and henchman to understand who is siding with who and it ends up being a lot of people running around in a library. Totally unbelievable, a quite preposterous plot and some pretty stupid dialogue with meaningless psychobabble. I just wanted it to stop.Having said that, I've never known so much activity to go on in a library. They are usually full of obnoxious teenagers talking really loud, tramps sitting around, old people reading newspapers and I remember using the place to crash out after a hard night's drinking or whatever else I'd been up to. I'd rather spend the length of this film in an actual library rather than watch the film.Finally, I remember being in our school library at the same time as a peculiar looking guy from the year below me. He was peculiar because he had recently died his hair gold. Not blonde……Gold…!! Anyway, I have to applaud him in his outlook on literature. I remember him saying aloud "Shakespeare! On the floor!" in disgust as he picked up the Shakespeare book and placed it carefully back on the shelf. I found it funny but it also made me view the notion of respect in a different light. He was genuinely offended by the fact that a Shakespeare book had been discarded on the floor. And I really liked him after that incident. I googled him recently and discovered that he has won some military honours in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan and is a Colonel and expert in military planning. Anyway, I see him as how George Sanders could have turned out if only Sanders had shown Shakespeare a little more respect. Even though I know that at school he died his hair gold! Ha ha.

Spondonman I saw this only once back in the '80's when UK TV regularly used to show programmes more than a few years old, never forgot it and finally caught up with again last night. It would be an ordinary little b picture in a rather grotty condition but for its unusual plot and setting which make it worth at least one look.Polished thug (George Sanders) – and his slinky female cohort (Gail Patrick) – both with mental issues are ready to murder people to get to valuable rare books so he can forge copies from them for resale. He murders a library security guard to get an olde copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet, problems then arise after he rips off a sinister gang of Nazis already speculating for the post War world, and a mercenary private dick (Richard Denning) is also on his track. Most of it is set in a dimly lit city of a library with miles of bookshelves, only running back and forth along its aisles and even stumbling across the Art room twice cheapens the overall atmosphere, which is surprisingly dark and menacing. Make no mistake, the various sets of baddies at each other's throats are an evil bunch of weirdos, with Sanders spouting manic cod psychology at every lucid moment, never mind Patrick not telling the truth for the entire picture. With a stroke of luck long haired Denning sorts it all out leaving wide eyed Sanders hoping to "die in terror", Patrick to go her own sweet way as a not very convincing victim of her own conscience, and even walks off at the end happily for a coffee with a GI's girl. And this is only a sketch for there's a lot packed into 67 complicated minutes.Thought provoking hokum yet daft beyond words and a little gem I treasure. To paraphrase what the man said, fulfil your secret desire to be caught off guard and pleasantly surprised.

Kittyman This interesting film noir features three very good performances: Sanders, Patrick, and Blackmer. The scenes between Sanders and Patrick are particularly outstanding. Demming, as the detective, is unfortunately not nearly as good. He lacks the intelligence, strength, and cynical world view of a Bogart. Had Humphrey played this part, we could have had a classic.Pace, location (a library), and atmosphere are all good. But there are a few plot holes. Sanders strongly fears Blackmer and the ruthless organization (Nazis) he represents. Yet after mistakenly killing Blackmer, Sanders seems to experience no anxiety or remorse. Sanders then seizes the library and its occupants by using the ruse that he and his men are detectives investigating the murder. However, Sanders' hit man later tries to kill Demming by shooting him (without a silencer), even though the many other detainees could have been expected to hear, and become alarmed by, the noise. Finally, Sanders' hit man tries to kill Roberts, who has discovered the truth, but when she faints, he inexplicably does not. What bothered me the most, however, was that the chance for a great and unexpected conclusion was wasted. Throughout the film Patrick is portrayed as a smart, hard-as-nails sociopath fearing nothing. Yet at the end, she flees panic-stricken from the last surviving Nazi, a brutish thug. By the time the cops find him, he has killed her. And she ends up being just another weak, stereotypical victim. What should have happened is this: the cops find the Nazi thug, but he is dead. She has cleverly killed him, and then vanished -- to continue her evil ways.