MPI: Classic British Thrillers

[John Hodson]

From MPI in July Classic British Thrillers:

The Phantom Light (1935)
Michael Powell directed this creepy quota quickie before his success with the Academy Award winning Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes and the cult classic Peeping Tom. The disappearance of two lighthouse keepers stationed on the desolate coast of Wales is linked to the specter of a rogue beacon that lures freight ships to their destruction on the rocks. Gordon Harker (Alfred Hitchcock’s The Ring) and Binnie Hale (Love from a Stranger) star as bickering sleuths who must solve the mystery of “The Phantom Light” or become its next victims!

Red Ensign (1935)
This fact-based expose of corruption and sabotage in the British shipping industry is another early work from acclaimed director Michael Powell. With England’s commercial fleet in decline, idealistic shipbuilder David Barr (The Most Dangerous Game’s Leslie Banks) conceives a radical new design to revolutionize the industry. Denied capital to proceed by his firm’s board of directors, Barr funds the project himself, attracting the support of a beautiful heiress and the attention of a ruthless rival who will stop at nothing, even murder, to obtain Barr’s top secret design.

The Upturned Glass (1947)
Before he was a multiple Academy Award nominee, James Mason (Lolita) starred as a surgeon turned sleuth in this absorbing revenge thriller directed by Lawrence Huntington. After sparing the eyesight of a young patient, Dr. Michael Joyce falls in love with the girl’s grateful mother, Emma Wright (Rosamund John), whose husband has been absent for years. When her man returns unexpectedly, Emma reluctantly ends the affair, only to be killed in a mysterious fall. Using his surgical skills to trace the killer, Michael begins his own investigation but has no intention of handing the murderer over to the police.

Box art at DVD Empire

[HerrSchreck]

I'll go for it... thrillers from the 30's... early British. POwell seals the deal for some shadowy midnight programmer fun.

[Tommaso]

Brilliant! I don't care much for thrillers, British or not, but TWO rare Powell films (even if they probably won't live up to his later works) makes this a no-brainer. Hooray!
Never heard of that company, though. Are they doing decent discs normally?

[HerrSchreck]

MPI Home Video has been home-vidding for quite awhile.

[tryavna]

Never heard of that company, though. Are they doing decent discs normally?

MPI released an excellent edition of Becket recently, and their earlier releases of the Rathbone-Bruce Sherlock Holmes series are very good, too (though almost unaccountably so, since they boast some of the lowest bitrates I've ever encountered). Anyway, when MPI puts in the effort, the results are most pleasing.

Re. the early Powells: I caught two of Powell's other quota quickies (Something Always Happens (1934) and Crown v. Stevens (1936)) when TCM did their second "Lost and Found" series a few months ago. (Apparently, Warner Home Video owns the rights to the films produced at Teddington Studios during the 1930s, so we should eventually see those two titles released by Warner eventually.) Both of them are extremely entertaining, though it's easy to tell that Powell was already better than the material he was given. Apropos the revived thread on Matter of Life and Death, Something Always Happens sort of veers off suddenly from where you think the story is going into a more routine comedy. Crown v. Stevens would actually be pretty good -- and actually prefigures Hitchcock's Suspicion in several ways -- but suffers from bland casting.

At any rate, I haven't seen the two Powells mentioned in this set, but basing my opinion on quota quickies I have seen, I suspect that committed Powell fans will find them rewarding. If nothing else, it's fun to pick out those moments where Powell is using ideas he had already learned from Hitchcock, Lang, and Ingram.

[Cinetwist]

I suppose The Phantom Light can be described as a thriller. And it's ok for a quota quickie.

But Red Ensign is not a thriller in any sense of the word. It's a dreadfully dull drama. It really is as boring as its plot description on imdb: 'David Barr is the manager and chief designer of a British shipyard (when we still built ships). The shipyard is in financial trouble but Barr has a design for a new ship that will save them all. Can he get the ship built in spite of the opposition from his own bankers as well as the rival shipbuilders and their infiltrated militants.'

Maybe more so, as I don't remember the infiltrators being very militant.

There is certainly nothing borrowed from Ingram, Lang or Hitch (maybe a little in Phantom Light), but you have to remember that he was turning these things out in a week or two. They really were just quota fodder that would give him his break.

[HerrSchreck]

A WEEK? Jesus X Blupstein... that's fast for a quota quickie even in the days of the silent era. That's like 1905 One-Reeler fast.

[Via_Chicago]

A WEEK? Jesus X Blupstein... that's fast for a quota quickie even in the days of the silent era. That's like 1905 One-Reeler fast.

Fuller wrapped filming on The Steel Helmet in just ten days!

[Cinetwist]

A WEEK? Jesus X Blupstein... that's fast for a quota quickie even in the days of the silent era. That's like 1905 One-Reeler fast.

Yes, I might have misremembered that.... But for some productions a fortnight isn't outlandish at all. During this time he was making up to 7 films a year. That's around 2 months a film max, but obviously there was always lots of down-time, gaps between projects; so the actual filming of one of the things (bar pre and post production) was very short indeed.

I've just looked at the segments concerning those films in his autobiography, but couldn't find any reference to shooting schedules, although I know he does talk about time-scales for some of his quota-quickies.

[tryavna]

DVD Talk reviews this set.

(Not due for a month, though.)

[Tommaso]

Wonderful, especially as I had my doubts about transfer quality before. But this seems to be a great set at a good price. Powell fans rejoice!