Review: Hell is a City


Stanley Baker plays a tough Manchester copper out to nab escaped crook John Crawford, who intends on robbing bookmaker Donald Pleasence, with the help of a small crew (including Joby Blanshard). Vanda Godsell is Crawford’s former squeeze, a barmaid who would very much like to be Baker’s squeeze. Billie Whitelaw plays Pleasence’s floozy of a wife, who also knows Crawford in the biblical sense.

 

Typically tough, gritty 1960 British cops-and-crims flick from writer-director Val Guest (“The Quatermass Xperiment”) and Hammer Studios, with particularly excellent B&W cinematography from Hammer regular Arthur Grant (“Dracula Has Risen From the Grave”, “Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb”) and square-jawed toughness from underrated lead actor Stanley Baker. It’s the type of thing the Yanks did so well in the 40s and 50s, and the Brits in the late 50s through to the 60s and 70s. This one’s certainly pretty good, even if the idea of criminals walking around with green-inked hands that they’ve somehow failed to notice doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Any scrutiny. At all.

 

The supporting cast has some solid names and faces, with Billie Whitelaw in particular doing excellent work, and Joby Blanshard rock-solid too. Donald Pleasence has a colourless role, but bless his heart he makes sure you notice the hell out of him. Subtle he ain’t (it’s pretty well-known that he’d try his best to steal scenes), and that’s the way we love him. I can almost guarantee that it was his idea for his character to have a constant case of the sniffles. I see what you’re doing there, Donald. Well-played. American-born John Crawford seems a little out of place, since he certainly didn’t have enough marquee value to warrant such international casting, but he’s OK too as the chief heavy.

 

Nothing brilliant, but pretty solid and enjoyable stuff if you’re a fan of this sort of thing like me. Baker is ideal, and the jazz score by Stanley Black (“Vicious Circle”, “The Flesh and the Fiends”, “City Under the Sea”) is snazzy and jazzy too.

 

Rating: B-

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