36 Hours, 1953
Directed by Montgomery Tully.
Starring Dan Duryea, Elsie Albiin, Gudrun Ure, Eric Pohlmann, Kenneth Griffith, Harold Lang, John Chandos.
SYNOPSIS:
An American pilot AWOL from the states is framed for his wife’s murder and has just 36 hours to prove his innocence.
Based on the novel of the same name by American pulp writer Steve Fisher, 36 Hours (a.k.a. Terror Street in the US) stars Dan Duryea as Major Bill Rogers, a US Air Force pilot with 36 hours leave that he is taking in London so he can visit his estranged wife Katherine (Elsie Albiin). The couple wed very quickly after meeting and made a home in London, but Bill was called back to the US for three months, leaving Katherine alone in London making ‘new friends’ without her husband.
After briefly meeting up with his wife, Bill is knocked unconscious by one of those ‘friends’ who goes on to kill Katherine with Bill’s pistol, framing the pilot for her murder. With 36 hours to prove his innocence before the plane returning to America takes off, can Bill uncover the truth before he is arrested by the police or listed as AWOL by the Air Force?
Only one way to find out. 36 Hours is a very British attempt at cashing in on the film noir stylings from Hollywood crime thrillers of the period, and as such it is fairly workmanlike in its attempts to catch the tense excitement of criminal gangs, a woman in peril and a desperate hero trying to prove his innocence. Director Montgomery Tully is a capable director but 36 Hours feels very stagey, with none of the added flair for adventure or romance that Hammer’s stalwart director Terence Fisher would inject into similarly styled movies from the time, such as Mantrap and Stolen Face.
The slightly dreary UK setting doesn’t do much to add to the atmosphere, where instead of the dangerous streets of a big US city we have Bill Rogers sneaking around the council estates of southern England. To be fair, the filmmakers do try to make London seems a little more dangerous and darkly alluring than it actually was at the time, but every so often a shot of Dan Duryea running past a pile of bricks and rubble next to a broken fence down a back alley in Bray somewhat takes the edge off.
Bill Rogers himself is a fairly unlikeable character, although Dan Duryea isn’t really given much to do with him apart from what was written on the page. More of an antihero, it is only the fact that we know he is innocent that stops him becoming less interesting than John Chandos as Orville Hart – one of Katherine’s ‘new friends’ – who is one moustache twirl short of becoming a pantomime villain, despite the fact he doesn’t have a moustache.
With no Terence Fisher or any other notable Hammer regulars showing up, 36 Hours does feel a little bit like a filler movie in their release schedule, repeating the formula of the far superior Stolen Face (to a degree) but substituting some of the ingredients. Harold Lang and Kenneth Griffith are probably the most recognisable faces from British cinema here, with voice-of-Blofeld Eric Pohlmann showing up as a smuggler and future Super Gran Gudrun Ure playing Jenny, an innocent woman who takes pity on Bill and gets involved in helping him, but the lack of big names behind and in front of the camera doesn’t do anything to lift the material much above being merely competent.
However, despite the lacklustre nature of the movie Hammer have worked their magic with the special features, including the UK and US versions – each with their own audio commentaries – as well as several featurettes detailing the ‘Brit Noir’ as a genre (or a mood, as one commentator puts it), an exploration of Steve Fisher’s written work, a look at the career of Dan Duryea, two episodes of US radio play Suspense starring Dan Duryea and other oddities, including a 120-page book featuring essays and artwork reproductions.
Despite the generic nature of the movie, 36 Hours is still a reasonably entertaining thriller if you can get past that it really is just Hammer taking the US film noir stereotypes and moving them to Britain with very little nuance to make it feel like anything more. It goes without saying that collectors of Hammer’s recent releases will buy it to avoid any gaps in their collection, but taken as a movie on its own there are better examples of Hammer stretching their creative talents when it came to emulating what was happening in America, which goes to show what happens when you mess with the formula.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
