THE BRIGHTON STRANGLER (1945)

On New Year's Eve, we see a man named Edward Grey strangle a woman to death only to discover that we're watching the last scene of a play. Grey is a character being played by Reginald Parker in a hit play written by his fiancée Dorothy Kent. But after a year, he's tired of playing the part and this December 23rd performance is the last. Parker is heading to Victoria Station to take a train to be with Dorothy to marry her over the holidays. But he's caught in a bombing raid, gets a concussion and loses his memory. Wandering in a daze to the station, he overhears a woman named April ask for a ticket to Brighton which sparks a memory of some dialogue in his play and he too goes to Brighton under the name Edward Grey. He becomes friendly with April, who has secretly married a pilot named Bob but hasn't yet told her family for fear that they will worry unduly about him. As he helps her carry out her subterfuge, allowing April to spend time with Bob, Dorothy gets the news that Reginald was a casualty of the London raid, so no one is looking for Reginald as he, thinking he's Edward, begins a murder spree based on incidents from the play. Bob, seeing a poster of Reginald in a bar, puts two and two together, but as it's now New Year's Eve, will he be able to stop Grey from acting out the climax for real—with April?

The device of having an actor get carried away by a murderous role was used a couple of years later in Ronald Colman's A Double Life. This B-movie second feature runs just a bit over an hour, so it doesn't have time to explore the gimmick with any real psychological depth, but its length keeps it focused and moving at a good clip. B-lead John Loder (pictured) is quite good as the actor turned killer, and despite his crimes, we remain sympathetic to him to the end. June Duprez (as April) and Rose Hobart (as Dorothy) are adequate. Michael St. Angel, an American actor I'd never heard of, is good in the limited role of Bob the pilot. It's mostly thanks to Loder and some atmospheric cinematography that the movie works as well as it does. A nice little B-movie gem. [YouTube]