Windermere is a professional blackmailer. His latest victim is Mollie Ryder; though married, she has been conducting an affair with Windermere and he talked her into leaving England with him, but as they wait for their train, she has second thoughts. However, he has a batch of love letters she wrote to him which he's holding to keep her with him. In his hotel room as Windermere packs his bags for the train trip, another victim, Camberley, confronts him, bashing him over the head and killing him. He stuffs Windermere's body in one of his bags, but before he can leave, Mollie's husband John, who knows about the letters, arrives. He assumes that Camberley is Windermere; they fight and John gets the letters and takes Windermere's tickets so he can surprise Mollie on the train. So, the situation on the train is: John is traveling under Windermere's name and with his luggage, and has made up with Mollie, with neither one knowing that Windermere is dead and stuffed in a trunk that John is traveling with. In France, at customs, the trunk is opened, the body found, and John sent back to England. At Scotland Yard, John is freed while they investigate, but a detective is assigned to trail him--Camberley, the killer. Luckily, amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey is also on the case.
Wimsey is the famous detective featured in a series of novels by Dorothy Sayers. It's a little odd that here, Wimsey (played by Peter Haddon) is basically a supporting character--John Loder, who plays John Ryder, is top-billed, and Wimsey doesn't really enter the proceedings until about 20 minutes in. Haddon plays him in a slipshod way as a silly fop and never really brings the character to life. (I've read one Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night, and seen one other Wimsey movie, Busman's Honeymoon, aka Haunted Honeymoon, which featured Robert Montgomery playing Wimsey more like Nick Charles from the Thin Man movies.) Fans of Wimsey will be disappointed, but fans of B-mysteries or of train thrillers will be more satisfied. Loder (pictured) is fine as Ryder; Shakespearean actor Donald Wolfit is good as the killer; Aubrey Mather, as Wimsey's valet, is more fun than Wimsey. The film moves along fairly well, with a very good climactic chase around a trainyard at night. Diehard Sayers fans may want to skip this, but fans of classic-era British B-films will enjoy it. [YouTube]
1 comment:
The best screen Lord Peter Wimsey by far was Ian Carmichael in the 1970s TV series. He nailed the character perfectly. Surprisingly (given that Carmichael was known entirely as a comic actor) he gives the character the necessary serious edge as well to balance the foppishness.
It's a TV series that I recommend very very highly.
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