Blackout (1954)
Directed by Terence Fisher

Film Review

Before the British film company Hammer hit the jackpot in the late 1950s with its series of low-budget Gothic horror offerings it ventured somewhat haphazardly into just about every genre under the sun, including film noir thrillers.  Blackout (a.k.a. Murder by Proxy) is one of Hammer's less successful attempts at a film noir, a pedestrian whodunit that is lazily dressed up as the palest imitation of a classic American film noir, complete with a Bogart-like hero and sizzling femme fatale.  Hammer's regular director Terence Fisher does a reasonable job of keeping the limp narrative on the rails, but the increasingly hard-to-believe plot developments makes the credibility gap harder to bridge as the film nears its unimaginably contrived ending.  Leads Dane Clark and Belinda Lee are both visibly wasted on such low-grade B-movie trash as this, and you can't help wondering where their careers might have gone if they had starred in a real film noir, rather than lame, micro-budget pastiches such as this.  Blackout's main strength is Walter J. Harvey cinematography, particular the moody exteriors which offer an almost grimly poetic view of London in the aftermath of WWII.

Film Synopsis

Casey Morrow is an American ex-serviceman who is trying, unsuccessfully, to find work in London.  Down to his last few shillings, he gets himself blind drunk at an expensive nightclub and is just about to pass out when an attractive young woman, Phyllis Brunner, makes him an offer he is too insensible to comprehend.  Before the blackness swallows him up Casey imagines Phyllis offering him a huge wad of cash if he will agree to marry her.  The next morning, Casey wakes up in a cramped studio apartment belonging to a woman he has never seen before in his life.  His host sends him on his way, having taken the trouble to wash some bloodstains from his coat.  In the morning newspapers, Casey learns that Phyllis is a wealthy heiress who has gone missing after her father was murdered.  Realising that he is the obvious murder suspect Casey decides that he must play private detective, to solve the mystery and unmask the real killer before he himself is arrested...