Given that my interest in football starts and stops with finding out what time big matches are on so I can avoid pubs with screens, this is an unusual film to pick. So Why am i picking it? Well, I watched it last week and there’s been a bit in the news recently about it’s director Thorold Dickinson (you just don’t see many Thorolds these days) folowing a restoration of his masterpiece The Queen of Spades.
Arguably The Queen of Spades would have been the film to write about but I haven’t seen that. Besides, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, while not in the same league (I’m told), is still great fun. It’s a fairly basic whodunnit based around the Arsenal Stadium. At least i say it’s a whodunnit but to be honest, I don’t think you have a cat in hell’s chance of guessing who did it. I certainly didn’t come close. What the film feels most of all like is a very well made (and pretty high budget) episode of Midsummer Murders or some similar show.
It’s starting to sound like a pretty dreary, middle Englandish sort of a film so I should hastily say that it’s not. What really elevates the film is what elevates any whodunnit worth it’s salt, the key element that every TV detective show needs, that makes reason you watch Columbo and avoid Murder She Wrote; a great detective.
Leslie Banks’s Inspector Slade is a wonderful character, we meet him sporting a beret as he nimbly choreograph’s the policeman’s fundraising gala. He changes hats throughout, as he wears different ones depending on what he is doing, and is jovially polite to people who clearly hate him. Despite his eccentricities, he is of course brilliant and there is never any doubt that he will solve the thing.
In some ways this is a mediocre film made great by a single character but that misses some other really good performances. Ian Mclean plays Slade’s sidekick Sergeant Clinton and never allows Banks to steal the scenes completely, while heroines Greta Gynt and Liane Linden are likewise good.
The film may not be a masterpiece but it never purports to be one, it keeps it’s tongue firmly in it’s cheek and sets out to entertain. Which it undoubtedly does. It’s possible that a football fan might enjoy it even more.
My pick of this week (despite the presence of Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and It Happened One Night) is on Film 4 this Thursday at 3:00pm; Bad Day at Black Rock is one of those films that takes a Western plot and updates it brilliantly, and it’s one of Spencer Tacy’s finest thirllers. Miss it at your peril.
