Confession [The Deadliest Sin] ** (1955, Sydney Chaplin, Audrey Dalton, John Bentley, Peter Hammond) – Classic Movie Review 12,253

‘MOST AMAZING CRIME DRAMA OF THE YEAR! The Door Past Which No Law Could Go.’

Director Ken Hughes’s 1955 British black and white crime drama Confession [The Deadliest Sin] stars Sydney Chaplin, Audrey Dalton, John Bentley, and Peter Hammond. Hughes’s screenplay is based on the play Confession by Don Martin.

Charles Chaplin’s son Sydney stars in a watchable but thin and uninspired new look at the old idea about a priest who hears a murderer’s confession (‘I have killed a man, Father’) in the confessional box and can’t reveal his name to the police, and soon is under threat of death himself.

We have to confess that this efficient little thriller film is several steps down from great, but it manages to ring a few changes on the premise without being very surprising. Chaplin is fine as Mike Nelson who arrives at an English country cottage after working in the oil business in the US for many years, and so are the 50s British stalwarts, while writer-director Hughes succeeds in handling it with some flair and even flashes of originality.

The cast are Sydney Chaplin as Mike Nelson, Audrey Dalton as Louise Nelson, John Bentley as Inspector Kessler, Peter Hammond as Alan Poole, John Welsh as Father Neil, Jefferson Clifford as Pop Nelson, Patrick Allen as Corey the murdered man, Pat McGrath as Williams, Robert Raglan as Becklan, Betty Wolfe as Alan’s mother Mrs Poole, Richard Huggett as young priest, Eddie Stafford as Photographer, Percy Herbert as Barman, Felix Felton as bar customer, Dorinda Stevens as blonde in the bar, Sheila Allen, Alan Robinson, and Hugh Munro.

It was made by Anglo-Amalgamated Productions at Merton Park Studios, and released just after Hughes’s Little Red Monkey. These two hit films led Anglo-Amalgamated to produce films with bigger budgets and more American stars.

Confession [The Deadliest Sin] is directed by Ken Hughes, runs 90 minutes, is made by Anglo-Amalgamated Productions, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1955) (UK) and Allied Artists Pictures (1956) (US), is written by Ken Hughes, based on an original story by Don Martin, is shot in black and white by Paul Grindrod, is produced by Alec C Snowden, is scored by Richard Taylor, and designed by Harold Watson.

It was released in June 1955 (UK).

It was released on VHS in 1994 (UK) by Warner Home Video.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,253

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