User Reviews

This is the type of thriller where the ends don't all join up.What we know for certain from the very beginning is that Alan Wheatley is the murderer,simply because this is the role that he plays in nearly every film.However what is not quite as clear is why he is doing in all and sundry.We have Stanley Baker in a very early role playing a servant who is prepared to go to any lengths to protect his mistress.However there are too many unanswered questions.Like what is funny old Peter Jones doing in a role of a hit-man.Why is Alan Wheatley the head of a children's charity and a drug dealer at the same time.I could raise many points like this but none have a satisfactory answer.Thankfully it only lasts just over an hour so not much chance of getting bored.

A woman returns to England after the death of her father and inherits his property. There are however people who don't want her to inherit and attempts are made on her life. She and an old friend investigate and doubts are raised about her father's death and how drug selling may be involved. It is a moderate mystery with the main villain being obvious. The best scenes are probably the duck hunting expedition and the chasing of the said main villain at the end. Otherwise Terence Fisher directs in a pedestrian way.

Rona Anderson and Guy Rolfe as the main leads are given routine roles. More interesting are Peter Jones as a somewhat creepy Lips Leonard and the great Alan Wheatley as Hughes who quietly steals all the scenes he is in. Stanley Baker has a small part where he only has to look slightly mad but does it well enough. Dennis Harkin is amusing as Jimmy-The-One.

The music score is provided by Malcolm Arnold no less but is not as memorable as a lot of his many others.

A young woman, Barbara (Rona Anderson), arrives in England on hearing the news that her wealthy businessman father has died - apparently committing suicide. At a shooting party on her country estate, a man is found murdered on the marshes. Barbara and her boyfriend, Robert (Guy Rolfe), turn detective believing the death to be connected with that of her father's. They open the safe at her father's office and learn that it is being used as a link in a dope racket. It becomes clear that her father found this out and was murdered by his business partner, Wainwright (Francis Lister), who was part of the gang. But, Wainwright's accomplice, is aware that the couple are on his tail and they are confronted by him alone in the country house at night...

Content wise, it is utterly formulaic British second feature stuff but under Terence Fisher's direction - an early film for him made about five years before he became a key creative figure in the British horror boom via Hammer - it is lifted from being a mediocre to a good film (for its kind). The scenes in and around Rona Anderson's country estate are especially effective with Reg Wyer's b/w lighting making them sinister and shivery. Rona Anderson and Guy Rolfe are cheerful and likable as the standard b-pic hero and heroine while Alan Wheatley is excellent as the head of the criminal gang working as the head of a widow and orphans charity as a cover. Look out for Stanley Baker too as a family servant who is determined to save Anderson from Wheatley's clutches. The film was produced by Lance Comfort who was a prolific second feature director throughout the 1950's and early 60's including such films as Eight O' Clock Walk, Tomorrow At Ten, Blind Corner and Pit Of Darkness.

Home To Danger is now available on DVD on Renown Pictures coupled with Montgomery Tully's espionage drama Master Spy.

Another fast moving, action packed quota quickie, this crime drama deals with innocenr Rona Anderson, the heir to the estate of her father's old country house which leads her to be the target of killers due to what some criminal associates of her father were hiding inside. Anderson nearly becomes a victim several times, always aided by the presence of Stanley Baker, dim witted handyman who has lived at the estate since she was a child. At under 70 minutes, this never stops moving, but I thought that the last real stretch things out far too much and had some laughable moments where Anderson basically stood there as the killer approached. Surprisingly violent for a film of this era, it's a well filmed programmer, not without flaws but a passable time-filler with decent performances and lots of interesting supporting characters but surprisingly humorless.

Well made little thriller with good performances. It's very well shot but has a few script problems (the villain has the heroine at gunpoint, doesn't shoot her, but shoots everyone around her..?). Still, very enjoyable and worth seeing. Director Terence Fisher does an admirable job.

Finding Distant Trumpet (also reviewed) to be a plodding mess, I began searching on Talking Pictures free catch-up site for other, hopefully better movies from film maker Terence Fisher. Discovering one pre-Hammer Horror title by Fisher on the site, I got set to go home.

View on the film:

Highlighted in the splendid book Terence Fisher Master of Gothic Cinema by Tony Dalton that after his contract ended once Gainsborough Pictures was sold to Rank, this film was the first, of what was to become a long period of him working for independent studios, directing auteur Terence Fisher surrounds the family manor house with a Gothic Thriller atmosphere, via Fisher & The Man In The Back Seat (1961-also reviewed) cinematographer Reginald H. Wyer walking through the long shadows and thick clouds of smoke (a major recurring motif in Fisher's works) and an excellent ominous score from The Night My Number Came Up (1955-also reviewed) composer Malcolm Arnold, towards ultra-stylized first-person shots capturing Barbara getting in the cross-hairs of those who don't want her to uncover the household secret.

Fisher skillfully explores the house with proto- jump scare push-ins and zoom-ins on hands (which cast long shadows on the walls) bursting out of the darkness to strangle Barbara and anyone feared to be offering clues,until Fisher gloriously sinks the hands, and the household, into wide-shots covering every inch of the surrounding marshes.

Bringing Barbara back home for a reading of the will with her family, the screenplay by Francis Edge (who also edited the film), Ian Stuart Black and John Temple-Smith get the knives out for Barbara, (played by Rona Anderson, who wonderfully expresses the lingering doubt Barbara has over the "suicide" it is claimed by the family that her dad committed) by drawing family members, household servants and friends (played by a terrific ensemble cast of Peter Jones,Stanley Baker and Alan Wheatley) as people who would very much like Barbara to take the claimed suicide of her dad at face value, leading to the writers lining the dark walls of the manor house with tense underworld crime dealings taking place under the upper-crust facade, which Barbara shines a light on, to discover the dangers at home.