Deadly Nightshade

What a fine leading man Emrys Jones was, in this well-scripted and gripping suspense thriller, where he plays two characters who resemble one another. As usual with identity swaps in such films, the unsuspecting fellow finds himself in a much worse mess than the one he left. There is something hypnotic about Jones's quiet, melancholy, and brooding under-playing of both roles. This is what you could call 'a taut little British film', positively reeking of the atmosphere of early 1950s Britain with its stone sinks, tweed jackets, polite policemen, pinta bitter, wide boys, loving looks with few words (no slobbery kisses, no clinches), self-control of manner, and looming sense of 'bigger things out there' which sometimes intrude on a chap's quiet country cottage. Joan Hickson plays an annoying part-time housekeeper with the correct angle of sniff. A jolly good show all round, no doubt of that.