Alex Nicol made two such films for Hammer and Lippert. I am a bit more partial to "The House Across the Lake" which also starred Hillary Brooke.
on 9/8/2026, 1:49 pm
Raoul Walsh's "The Man I Love" featured Ida Lupino, Andrea King, Martha Vickers, and Dolores Moran. What's not to like? George Gershwin music was included for good measure.
Charles Vidor's "Gilda" is highly rated and deservedly so. This popular film attracted the largest crowd on Labor Day. Attendance has been so strong during the festival that the theater employees have required the main theater to be vacated after the end of every single film for proper cleaning. Ticket and festival pass holders have to exit the auditorium, which seats more than 700, and wait to be seated separately for each movie.
I have often wondered if the screenplay of "Gilda" was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" in terms of one similar plot point? George Macready schemes to control the world supply of tungsten through a cartel. He associates and quarrels with exiled Nazi War Criminals hiding in Argentina. The rare mineral sought by the Nazis in "Notorious" is uranium.
"Face the Music" (alternate title: "The Black Glove") was directed by Terence Fisher. It was produced as part of an agreement between Hammer Studios and the American distributor and producer Robert L. Lippert.
A rising or fading American film star or two would be provided to help market the movies in the USA while Hammer churned out the "B" movies in an economical fashion. While I am familiar with several of the Hammer noirs, including several others directed by Fisher such as "Blackout" and "The Stolen Face," I had not seen "Face the Music" until yesterday.
The climax of the film was a bit of a disappointment as a touring jazz trumpeter (Alex Nicol) assembles a group of police detectives and murder suspects in a single room and exposes the identity of the true killer in the typical "whodunnit" fashion. That is the one serious knock on the Hammer noir adaptations: too many of these movies end rather quickly with the crime being explained.
Dan
Responses « Index