Break in the Circle, 1955.
Directed by Val Guest.
Starring Forrest Tucker, Eva Bartok, Eric Pohlmann, Fred Johnson, Arnold Marlé, Guy Middleton, Reginald Beckwith, Marius Goring.
SYNOPSIS:
An adventurer is hired by a German millionaire to help a Polish scientist escape to the West.
Captain Skip Morgan (Forrest Tucker) is a boat-owning adventurer – i.e. smuggler – who lives in a Cornish fishing village, earning his keep by basically doing anything for money. When he is visited by the overly polite Major Hobart (Guy Middleton) to take on a job on behalf of wealthy Baron Keller (Marius Goring) to bring a Polish scientist from East Germany across to the West, but for the cocky American things aren’t as straightforward as they seem.
Filmed in London, Hamburg, the Cornish village of Polperro and, of course, Bray Studios, Break in the Circle has the feel of an international crime thriller as Skip Morgan switches from boats to cars and then back to the seas, guns pointed at various people and dodgy science questions being asked, but unfortunately the script doesn’t manage to convince on the same level as Morgan goes from place to place like an amateur James Bond – because a lot of people seem to know who he is, which isn’t good for a covert operation such as springing a world-renowned scientist with a formula for a new fuel from post-WWII Berlin – and incurring the wrath of any number of European authorities suspicious of Americans in sailor’s hats appearing out of nowhere.
For his part, Forrest Tucker is sparky enough as a lovable rogue with a heart of gold but he doesn’t seem to quite fit into the dour, post-war European setting, and with the script feeling padded and forced in places there is a lot placed on him to keep things moving, and on that basis Break in the Circle isn’t as exciting as its plot would appear on paper. The supporting cast is made up of familiar pre-Gothic Hammer players, and they all deliver their lines well enough but the overall direction is a bit flat and uninspired to really get the most out of the material, although the screen does light up a bit whenever Kim Novak as Skip’s love interest Lisa appears.
Where the screen does not light up, however, is with the weird Eastmancolor visuals the film employs. Break in the Circle was Hammer’s second colour feature after Men of Sherwood Forest the previous year, and whereas that movie was full of vibrant greens and reds, this one is fairly drab and inconsistent, with some scenes being clearer than others, at its worst looking like old fifth-generation VHS footage that has been shoved in without being remastered. Yes, Hammer can only work with the existing materials in whatever state they are in, but given that this is a 4K UHD release, the quality is such that the UHD doesn’t add much – if anything at all – to the already muddy Blu-ray picture.
This being Hammer, though, you don’t just get the movie in this package, and if Break in the Circle doesn’t really impress on its own merits then at least the supplementary material is worth the price of admission. Coming on a 4K UHD disc and two standard Blu-rays, you get the widescreen UK theatrical version as well as the ‘As Filmed’ version and the US theatrical version, which is in black-and-white and probably the better option given how murky it is in colour.
As well as separate audio commentaries for the different versions there is a short featurette about Hammer filming in Cornwall and another about them in Berlin, stills and publicity materials, but the gem of this set is Eurocrime, a 95-minute documentary covering Hammer’s foray into European crime thrillers featuring contributions from Barry Forshaw, Sergio Angelini and Laura Mayne, and if the main feature itself is a bit of a disappointment then having this in the set makes up for it and adds another perspective to an area of genre cinema that Hammer aren’t always readily associated with.
Overall, this one is one for the Hammer devotee and box set collectors only. Coming off the back of Men of Sherwood Forest and Third Party Risk, and being released around the time that Hammer were about to be inspired by the US sci-fi trend, Break in the Circle feels like a stopgap, a place-filler while they try and find some new direction. It came later that year with The Quatermass Xperiment and X the Unknown in 1956, making Break in the Circle their final (for now) attempt at a crime thriller before the horror took over in 1957, although they would produce a few more dramas before then. A shame, then, that it is quite a dull and uninteresting one to go out on.
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Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Chris Ward
