Backfire! ** (1962, Alfred Burke, Zena Marshall, Oliver Johnston) – Classic Movie Review 12,106

Backfire! (1962, Alfred Burke, Zena Marshall, Oliver Johnston).

Director Paul Almond’s 1962 British black and white Merton Park second feature thriller film Backfire! stars Alfred Burke, Zena Marshall and Oliver Johnston.

It is a cheap and humble but reasonably satisfactory Edgar Wallace mystery support feature about an insurance man investigating arson and murder at a cosmetics factory.

Bernard Curzon (Oliver Johnston), the elderly head of a failing cosmetics firm, employs the brash, cold and confident and vaguely sinister Mitchell Logan (Alfred Burke) to save his ailing business. However Logan’s confidence is not matched by his business abilities and he decides that the best way forward is the desperate idea of burning the factory down, leaving the cleaner dead.

Backfire is tolerably made and effectively performed.

Also in the cast are Noel Trevarthen, Suzanne Neve, Derek Francis, John Cazabon, and Madeleine Christie.

It was released in UK cinemas in May 1962 as the support film to Waltz of the Toreadors (1962), one of a handful of Merton Park’s Edgar Wallace series to go out on the Rank circuit rather than ABC.

Backfire! is directed by Paul Almond, runs 61 minutes, is made by Merton Park Studios, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1962) (UK), is written by Robert Stewart, based on the novel by Edgar Wallace, is shot by Bert Mason, is produced by Jack Greenwood, and is scored by Bernard Ebbinghouse.

The 48 Edgar Wallace Mysteries: The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1960), Marriage of Convenience (1960), The Man Who Was Nobody (1960), The Malpas Mystery (1960), The Clue of the New Pin (1960), The Fourth Square (1961), Partners in Crime (1961), The Clue of the Silver Key (1961), Attempt To Kill (1961), The Man at the Carlton Tower (1961), Never Back Losers (1961), The Sinister Man (1961), Man Detained (1961), Backfire! (1962), Candidate for Murder (1962), Flat Two (1962), The Share Out (1962), Time to Remember (1962), Number Six (1962), Solo for Sparrow (1962), Death Trap (1962), Locker 69 (1962), Playback (1962), Locker Sixty-Nine (1962), The Set Up (1962), On the Run (1962), Incident at Midnight (1963), Return to Sender (1963), Ricochet (1963), The £20,000 Kiss (1963), The Double (1963), The Partner (1963), To Have and To Hold (1963), The Rivals (1963), Five To One (1963), Accidental Death (1963), Downfall (1963), The Verdict (1964), We Shall See (1964), Who Was Maddox? (1964), Act of Murder (1964), Face of a Stranger (1964), Never Mention Murder (1964), The Main Chance (1964), Game for Three Losers (1965), Change Partners (1965), Strangler’s Web (1965), Dead Man’s Chest (1965).

The long series of second feature films based on Edgar Wallace novels, released between 1960 and 1965 in British cinemas, were later sold to American TV and screened there as The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,106

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