Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

COUNTERSPY MEETS SCOTLAND YARD

Ron Randell
COUNTERSPY MEETS SCOTLAND YARD (1950). Director: Seymour Friedman.

In the desert town of Croftenay, a group of American counter-intelligence agents join forces with a visitor from Scotland Yard, Simon Langton (Ron Randell). The agents are headed by David Harding (Howard St. John of Strait-Jacket), who uncovers a nest of spies centering on the office of phony Dr. Gilbert, aka Hugo Borin (Everett Glass). After Chief of Section Don Martin (Harry Lauter) is murdered, Langton takes over his job and meets Martin's secretary-assistant and former fiancee, Karen Michelle (Amanda Blake). The spies are after a gyroscopic control on Professor Schuman's (Gregory Gaye) rocket, and hypnotize Karen to get the information. Langton goes undercover as an elderly patient to get the goods on the spies and get the classified Intel away from them. Australian-born Randell [I Am a Camera], always a good actor, is fine as Langton and affects an English accent in this; his last name is pronounced the same as Tony Randell. Other familiar cast members include Rick Vallin, John Dehner [The Chapman Report], and Fred F. Sears (later a prolific director of The Giant Claw and many others) as agents. June Vincent as quite good as the deceptively friendly nurse, Barbara, who is in cahoots with the doctor.

Verdict: Acceptable time-passer with some good performances and scenes, and versatile Randell is always interesting. **1/2.

2 comments:

angelman66 said...

Will have to check this one out, Bill, though I am not at all familiar with Randell, though his face does ring a bell.
-C

William said...

I'm sure you've seen him in a number of films over the years. When he was doing an American accent, he often sounded quite a bit like Humphrey Bogart!