User Reviews

Now here's a dilemma -

What do you do when you come home early to your little semi-detached in commuter land to find the house empty apart from a dead body in your bathroom? Why, naturally, you draw the curtains and dig a hole in the middle of the living-room, don't you? Ignoring various neighbours asking for cups of tea and people fossicking around in your herbaceous border, your scheme is nearly foiled by the blind piano-tuner who.... Oh never mind...

On second thoughts, it's not too bad a suspense/drama thing, with a twist of course, and worth an hour of your time.

A teacher comes home on the last day of term and finds his wife away and a dying man in the bathroom. He decides not to call the police but to protect his wife who he suspects of the killing buries the body under the lounge floor. As you do. It doesn't really make sense. Am not sure why the man was killed and what was his connection with the wife. There is a mention of drugs but it was unclear what that was about. And would they have the piano tuner come in the day before their going on holiday not to mention the boy coming for the piano lesson on the same day? Add also a nosey neighbour and nuns collecting donations and it all seems too contrived just to ramp up the tension but it doesn't really. Peter Halliday plays the teacher Harry Barnes quite well, his mounting despair and panic are deftly portrayed which is a plus as he is onscreen most of the time. Not a bad film but could have been more gripping.

"Dilemma" is a beaut little crime gem penned by Pip and Jane Baker who went on to write scripts for "Dr. Who". Surprisingly it had only a limited initial release (and I do mean limited) in Yorkshire and has only been shown once on English TV - it really deserves to be better known. The sparse showings may have had something to do with the fact that none of the players went on to anything of importance, although Ingrid Hafner was in the original series of "The Avengers" but left the show when offered the role in "Dilemma" (silly girl, it was a pretty thankless role with her only appearing at the beginning and at the end) and Peter Halliday whose face is familiar through countless TV shows.

Hitting you initially with an upbeat jazz score, this nifty but bizarre little thriller has loving husband coming home after work only to discover a man's body in the bathroom and his wife missing. (She has already been seen fleeing from the house in disarray over the credits). He is a teacher, just starting on holidays ("you lucky teachers with all your holidays" says busy body neighbour Mrs. Jones whose peering into windows and popping around with cups of tea give the movie some of it's thrills)!! Everything points to Jean (Hafner) being the murderess as he finds a bloodied apron and a broken glass in the laundry basket, so of course he does the sensible thing - no, not call the police!! but dispose of the body under some loose floorboards in the living room.

In the middle of all this his mother comes around and their heart to heart proves there may be a few chinks in Harry's "idyllic" marriage. His mother has never approved of Jean and what's more she doesn't approve of Harry much either citing that at 32 his father was already a headmaster while Harry is content to just plod along with no ambition.

You think you know where this movie is headed but you don't - things come to a head when Harry pops into the local hardware centre to buy cement and soon after the police visit the same centre asking questions about an abandoned car and it's criminal owner, whether he had popped into the shop - it seems the shop owner hasn't always been on the up and up!!! Meanwhile Jean has been to the hospital to see about her cut hand and is now in a tizz down at the bank - she can't find her security box key (she dropped it in the garden when she fled) and she is desperate to get the box open!! The police's questions about "suspicious acting people" bring them to Harry's door and the ending is packed with accusations with the police initially loth to reveal why they are interested in this man but now revealing he is a known drug dealer who sets up housewives in well to do suburbs to act as carriers!!

Bryanston Studios had a small but prestigious distribution run starting with "The Battle of the Sexes" and "The Entertainer" and ending with "The System" with Oliver Reed. It was formed by Michael Balcon from the ashes of the defunct Ealing Studios.

Highly Recommended.

Another reviewer states that this film has only been shown once on television in UK - I disagree with this as my archives hold a DVD copy of a VHS tape made of a broadcast on 01/09/2002 by C5, and I am confident in stating that this film was also broadcast on 02 or 03/10/1998 also by C5.

Most of the characters in this film conform to stereotypes, and the dilemma is deciding which gender comes off worse: we see pretty Jean (Ingrid Hafner), who plans to leave doting husband Harry (Peter Halliday) on their wedding anniversary and flee the country with the proceeds of her heroin trafficking; Harry's harridan mother (Joan Heath); the omnipresent nosy next-door-neighbour Edna Jones (Patricia Burke); the inconvenient local church restoration fund collector (Barbara Lott) and her spooky acolyte; and, best of all, the casualty sister who tears Jean's Elastoplast off with barely concealed glee.

The men don't fare any better: there's Harry himself, who decides that the best course of action when finding a corpse in his bathroom is to pull up the living room floorboards to create an impromptu grave; a comedy lower middle manager husband of aforementioned nosy neighbour; a comedy dodgy builders' merchant complete with dodgy dozy Steven Berkoff lookalike sidekick; a blind piano tuner (Arthur Hewlett); a young piano student who seems to be mute (but is probably only voiceless here to save actor's fees) and, finally, Patrick Jordan as a plain clothes detective suffering from virtual brain death.

All comes right in the end though, with sexy Jean probably going to the gallows for murder - all's well that ends well - Result! 10/10 MJB