The House Of Blackmail [DVD]

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We enjoyed it from a film history point of view, and sat through until the end, despite a terrible print and even worse sound quality. House of Blackmail is a 1953 British second feature [1] drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Mary Germaine, William Sylvester and Alexander Gauge.

From the theme music I was expecting a comedy but it turned into an above average thriller I thought the 2 leads bounced off each other well and mary germaine held her own as genuine costar but the other men in the house were poorly written. The Swedish Film Institute has a duty to support production, distribution and screening of valuable film, to preserve and make accessible the Swedish film heritage and to represent Swedish film abroad.The print is reasonable, despite some scratching and the occasional bleaching that seems to be a feature of Renown releases. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

THE HOUSE OF BLACKMAIL (1953), starring William Sylvester, a likeable American actor with an elegant and throwaway style that's ideal for this Agatha Christie-like who-dunnit, about a group of people holed up in a country manor, each suspecting the others of murdering a blackmailer. Less complicated than Agatha Christie and is a lighthearted contrast with the depressing films noirs of the same period. A young man asks his sister Carol (Mary Germaine) to go to a blackmailer’s (Alexander Gauge) house and pay him off and reclaim any evidence.I'm thankful there's not too much comedic relief, as there often is with films of this kind, but it isn't dark or energetic either. THE SIX MEN (1951) - an old fashioned curiosity but we enjoyed the acting from Harold Warrender as the Scotland yard inspector and Michael Evans as his sidekick. It's a tongue-in-cheek affair, which we thought worked well, except for a Bugsy Malone style performance from American Reed DeRouen.