A Question of Suspense ** (1961, Peter Reynolds, Noelle Middleton, Yvonne Buckingham, Norman Rodway) – Classic Movie Review 13,393

The 1961 British murder and revenge crime thriller B film A Question of Suspense stars Peter Reynolds as a bent businessman who bumps off a colleague threatening to expose him for forging bonds.

Director Max Varnel’s low budget 1961 British black and white crime thriller B film A Question of Suspense stars Peter Reynolds, Noelle Middleton, Yvonne Buckingham, and Norman Rodway. It is written by Lawrence Huntington based on an original story by Roy Vickers.

Noelle Middleton plays Rose Marples, an attractive youngish woman who sets out to get revenge against the crooked businessman Tellman Drew (Peter Reynolds) who, she finds out, has murdered her long-term lover Frank Brigstock (Norman Rodway), Reynolds’s chief clerk and accountant and one-time school friend, after threatening to expose him for forging £30,000 worth of bonds. When the two men were young, they both fell for Rose, who has been living with Frank as his wife, and now Reynolds wants her back.

Can he get away with murder, and get off with the colleague’s lover?

It’s a shame that Rodway gets bumped off fairly early in the film, because he is excellent, excelling in his sparring scenes with Reynolds. That leaves Reynolds pretty much to carry the film on his own, which he does well with his unique brand of smarmy, slimy and smoothy shifty act. It’s a class act.

Middleton is pretty good too, making full use of her lovely deep, husky authoritative voice, and making the most of her role as the steely, determined woman who wants to bring Reynolds down, when the police are so ineffectual that they cannot. Middleton should be the good guy and Reynolds the bad guy, but ironically Reynolds is much more sympathetic, and, subversively, we are encouraged to desperately want him to get away with fraud and murder.

The two actors playing the cops (James Neylin as Inspector Hunter, Peter Dix as Detective Sergeant White) are pretty poor, slack and unconvincing, but then the characters of their roles are weak and ineffectual, so it’s not their fault. Yvonne Buckingham vamps a bit as Reynolds’s sexy secretary with designs on her boss, but her heart doesn’t seem to be in it.

The script’s OK, the thriller story decently set up and constructed, with an acceptable finish, and Varnel’s direction is sufficiently attentive. It’s plainly and economically filmed, but that’s the name of the game. It’s all over in a fast-moving hour. Peter Reynolds makes it all worthwhile. He specialised in these crime films, and it is one of several he made. Actors who can play villains are always in employment.

It’s hard to say why it is called A Question of Suspense, but if the question is, is there any suspense, well, yes there is, a little bit.

It was made at Ardmore Studios, Bray, Ireland, with exteriors shot around Dublin and Greystones (a coastal town and seaside resort in County Wicklow, Ireland), though the film is set in England. Frank Brigstock even goes to work on a CIÉ Irish transport company bus. They just didn’t care, and didn’t think anyone would notice.

The cast

The cast are Peter Reynolds as Tellman Drew, Noelle Middleton as Rose Marples, Yvonne Buckingham as Jean Forbes, Norman Rodway as Frank Brigstock, James Neylin as Inspector Hunter, Pauline Delaney [Pauline Delany] as Mrs Barlow, Anne Mulvey as Sally, Peter Dix as Detective Sergeant White, Fergus Cogley as bank manager, Dennis Franks as estate agent, and John Hoey as hall porter.

Evelyn Noelle Woodeson (born Middleton; 18 December 1926 – 30 January 2016)

Irish actress Noelle Middleton (18 December 1926 – 30 January 2016) was a leading lady of 1950s British films and one of the first BBC television announcers.

Yvonne Buckingham (born 1937)

Because Yvonne Buckingham had prominent roles in two 1961 films, A Question of Suspense and Murder in Eden, she forfeited £4,000 from an insurance policy she took out in 1958 when she was 20 against failure to become a star within five years.

She played a saloon girl in Robbery Under Arms (1957). In 1958, she played in the comedy Next to No Time. She played the title role, appearing only briefly as the deceased victim, in the 1959 film Sapphire.

She was in three Edgar Wallace Mystery films: Urge To Kill, The Sinister Man and Solo for Sparrow.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,393

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