Lindsey Lowson / 10 March 2025 / Categories: Movie and TV Shows

Wanted For Murder

Eric Portman in 1946 psychological thriller

First thing about this film which I had never seen before it does get you, not in the way you might expect, after reading the description, I wasn’t sure if it would be good or not.

Victor Colebrooke played by Eric Portman is a well to do, yet increasingly disturbed 35 year old loner living with his doting and devoted mother played by Barbara Everest in this flick the stage play written by Percy Robinson and directed by Lawrence Huntington.

It’s a little bit gruesome, as the plot unfolds and a cunning chief inspector Conway played by Roland Culver and you’ll spot a couple of big names in small roles, Wilfred Hyde White (Rex Harrison’s friend Colonol Hugh Pickering with whom he makes the wager in My Fair Lady) plays a tour guide in Madame Tussaud’s as the villain visits his notorious father’s exhibition stand and destroys it.

It’s a film of it’s time where the murders are expressed by duh, duh, duh, dom in the music and the screen going grey to black and then cut actually something I prefer, the grim parts subtly implied rather than thrust squarely in your face.

The run time is only 95 minutes but it definitely felt longer, perhaps because we know early on who the killer is, it’s more the story of how Inspector Conway gets Colebrooke in the end.

The film climaxes with a final murder planned in Hyde park. The heroine Anne Fielding played by Dulcie Gray will be the bait as inspector Conway clears the park of the public and enlists the help of every officer in London to bring in the Strangler.

There is a kind of twist at the end. I enjoyed the film in that Sunday afternoon classic black and white movie kind of way.

Would I watch again. Probably not.