Dick Barton at Bay ** (1950, Don Stannard, Meinhart Maur, Tamara Desni, George Ford) – Classic Movie Review 6,579

Director Godfrey Grayson’s 1950 British thriller film Dick Barton at Bay is the final episode of the Dick Barton trilogy, started with Dick Barton – Special Agent (1948). However, Dick Barton at Bay was actually the second of the three Hammer Film Productions made about the agent, although it was the third released, following Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949).

Don Stannard is back as Dick Barton and so is George Ford as Snowey White for the third and final Barton mystery, in which a scientist is abducted by a mad foreign anarchist called Serge Volkoff (Meinhart Maur) to force him to place a killer beam on Beachy Head lighthouse. Tamara Desni also stars as Anna.

The amateurish enthusiasm is still there in the acting and handling, and plot is serviceable, even if it is rather like the one about the spies out to send atomic rays from Blackpool Tower in part two, Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949).

With Stannard’s stalwart star turn, some amusing dialogue and pacy direction, as well as a short running time of just 68 minutes, this is still quite entertaining.

Stannard was killed in a car crash driving back from the wrap party just after making Dick Barton Strikes Back, aged only 33: he made just 10 films. Hammer cancelled a scheduled fourth Dick Barton film, Dick Barton in Africa, ending the series.

Also in the cast are Percy Walsh, Joyce Linden, Campbell Singer, John Arnatt, Richard George, Beatrice Kane, George Crawford, Paddy Ryan, Ted Butterfield, Patrick Macnee, Fred Owens, Yoshihide Yanai and Ben Williams, with Arthur Howard as an extra, Eliot Makeham as Police Sergeant, Jim O’Brady as Henchman, and Ross Parker as Stall Holder.

Dick Barton at Bay is written by Ambrose Grayson and Emma Trechman, based on Grayson’s story and the radio serial by Edward J Mason, shot in black and white by Stanley Clinton, produced for Hammer Film Productions by Henry Halstead, scored by Frank Spencer and Rupert Grayson and designed by James Marchant.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,579

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