User Reviews

Transmitted just before Christmas in 1989, what a festive downer. I love the Wexford adaptations, Baker was truly brilliant, generally the standard is very good, unfortunately this feature length episode is below par.

I'll start with the positives, the source material is good, the opening may not sound good, but it's visually rather good. The one shining light is Paola Dionisotti, she is terrific, with that hairstyle and attitude she's like something from another era, she's very excellent.

The exploding car scene is very good, it's one of the few scenes that is visually good, that dream sequence is just plain horrible.

Sadly, it's poor, it feels so at odds with the rest of the series, there is a harshness about this production, which truly is at odds with the generally softer nature of other episodes.

The music is dreadful, it grates from beginning to end. It is very slow and padded out, it lacks the content to have such a running time. We don't even get the opening credits.

I keep hoping for the series to get a full dvd release, I could cope without this one. 5/10.

A higher budget for this film than the regular TV series (they even blow up a car!). Despite being about two episodes in length rather than the usual 3, it still drags on. A young Camille Coduri beings some glamour to the proceedings but, unfortunately, the girl who usually plays a brass, has little flesh on show. It reminds me of the British films if the late 60s and early 70s that made no sense and ultimately killed our film industry. TVS did manage a few more years though!

"The Veiled One" stands out like a sore thumb from all the other adaptations of Ruth Rendell's "Inspector Wexford" books because it is spectacularly bad. This is due to unsubtle, heavy-handed direction; too many intercut scenes which lead to spaghetti-style storytelling; excessive use of dramatic music and sound effects; stilted acting and dialogue - especially the scenes with Reese and Wexford in hospital. This is the only Wexford adaptation that does not work at all for me.

This is a reasonable story but the material that seems to have been added to pad it out, the screen play and dialogue are terrible. Everyone shouts at everyone else all the way through. Why? Is it something in the air or is it the way their sentences are always finished for them when they pause that makes them so grumpy? A dream sequence that goes on and on and on. I was screaming at him to wake up as I couldn't stand any more! Like a fantasy scene out of the Avengers - but never ending! I really like the Wexford series as George Baker plays him wonderfully. The stories are good and the plot holes are few. It's a little dated but has a certain period charm that contrasts nicely with Ruth Rendell's dark stories. This film really butchered it. The music, the camera work, everything was formulaic and clichéd in the worst way. A silk purse turned into a ... (Please finish my sentence for me. And, remember, to be dramatic SHOUT.)

When a woman is found strangled to death Detective Inspector Burden believes that the only possible killer would be Clifford Saunders – a disturbed young man shaped by an oppressive mother who left his psychology session early and has no alibi for the crime. Wexford meanwhile has his doubts but has other things on his mind with his famous daughter arrested for trying to break into a nuclear weapons site. When he barely escapes a car bomb attack, Wexford is stuck in hospital and is plagued by visions and half memories that make little sense.

I've never really made the effort to get into any significant detective film series from the UK; sure I watch the Columbo's and the Perry Masons but the Morse and Wexford series never really attracted me. Despite that I decided to give this one a try but have to confess to finding very little to encourage me to come back and try this series again. The plot is a little too confused and it doesn't handle the different threads well at all, leaving me a bit confused about whether it was all meant to be connected or was I meant to be really interested in Wexford's private life (and if I was then why wasn't it better done). Parts of it work well and when it does settle down towards the end it gets more interesting but long sections of the first hour are pretty poor – with Wexford's "David Lynch-lite" dream sequence being bewilderingly bad.

The look of the film has dated quite badly but it isn't helped by how very "tv" McMurray's direction is. She can't do anything with the material and she actually contributes to the film being a bit messy for the first half. Baker is solid enough as Wexford and as the film settled into a "normal" mystery I actually started to like him as a character, but it was a bit too little too late. Ravenscroft also got better as the film went on and his character's obsession with his suspect is well done. Fitzgibbon and Dionisotti both play their roles straightforwardly but effectively enough to work.

Overall this is a pretty dull film that only gets interesting in the second half. The first half is messy and hard to care about but it does get better once it settles down a bit. The cast are solid enough but I was rather put off by the story itself and I'm not sure it did enough to make me bother coming back to the series again.

Who let the "Hitchcock wannabe" direct this episode? I thoroughly enjoy the Inspector Wexford series but this episode is so horribly written and directed as to make it almost unwatchable. The car explosion stands out as pure nonsense (and totally fake appearing) and the dream sequences are ridiculous. Weird camera angles, shouting matches and more combine to make this the worst episode ever!

I needed to watch this twice with closed captioning, and then backtrack a lot to figure out conversations and characters. I didn't really like it the first time around, but I felt its allure and I was compelled to understand whatever underlying meaning it had. After the second viewing, I can fairly say it's a somewhat clumsy and unpolished effort to find a murderer, with an unrelated incident in Chief Wexford's personal life that engrossed the story. Wexford in the Twilight Zone kept flashing in & out, unnecessarily taking up a lot of time. (I find most of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries are bloated.) Some characters were not developed enough in this episode. I ended up liking it better the second time around.

Some previous comments of (about) this movie begin with description of "woman is found strangled", etc, but this movie has very little to do with murder, death, detectives, crimes, etc. This movie is about LIFE! This movie is not for hyperactive 30-minute "Homer-style" "duh" Americans who require that someone is killed every minute in a movie in order to enjoy it. As to comments about Wexford's "doubts about his daughter" - and how it seemingly is unrelated to "second half of the movie" and "makes little sense" - the movie is about doubt and uncertainty that govern this World, and human life, by the way, too. Thus, this movie is not about "detective" and this is not a "detective" (or "Columbo" like) movie - the detective is only an excuse (framing, so to speak) to artfully describe and paint the greater canvas of the Universe (and the human life, as a subset of the greater Universe). Would you blame Salvador Dali or Pablo Picasso because some "part of the canvas" is seemingly "unrelated" and "makes little sense" (to only couple of people, perhaps)? Some viewers (minority) of Tarkovsky's films would also accuse him of "plot is a little too confused and it doesn't handle the different threads well at all". Such comments look like clichés, anyway. Read it again: "plot is a little too confused and it doesn't handle the different threads well at all."

Tarkovsky's and Wexford movies are not subjects to clichés. "David Lynch-lite" is laughable and totally cliché comment of Wexford. Life is not about comparing "David Lynch-lite" movies to "Tarkovsky-heavy" movies. I do not want to ever see any "Lynch-like" movies when I see a new movie. Life is infinite in its randomness, doubt and uncertainty. There will be no "David Lynch-lite" movies in the future because there will be Wexford. Life would be too boring if all the movies would automatically fall into only few categories of "Lynch", "Schwartznegger", etc.

This is a very strange and interesting episode. It's wonderful and weird. This is not your run of the mill (but great) Wexford adaptation for television. Don't read too much about it just sit back and enjoy. The Brits are singularly the best when it comes to murder mysteries and adaptations from novels. This is a gem within the series. It starts out as an ominous episode. The music soundtrack works perfectly. This is a mixture of Alfred Hitchcock and surreal artistry - the wrong and execution of this is marvelous. This series goes back to late 1980s for several years...never out of date - so glad it's on YouTube!!! Acting is fine script perfect !!! Loved it.