Hell Is a City ***½ (1959, Stanley Baker, John Crawford, Donald Pleasence, Maxine Audley, Billie Whitelaw, Warren Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 3461

Stanley Baker finds a strong vehicle in Hammer Films’ unusually energetic, atmospheric and swift-moving 1959 vintage crime thriller Hell Is a City, atmospherically shot largely on exteriors in Manchester, and topped of with an exciting, impressively staged climax.

Baker (with an effective Northern accent) attracts the attention as tough Manchester police inspector Harry Martineau, who becomes obsessed with capturing an escaped criminal. He is sure the escaped gem thief Don Starling (John Crawford) will return to the city to recover his stolen loot. When he does, Martineau stays doggedly on the trail of Starling, who makes contact with his old associates and bungles the robbery of £4,000 from a bookmaker, Gus Hawkins – a role that gives Donald Pleasence lots of easy scene-stealing chances.

Hell Is a City also stars Maxine Audley, Billie Whitelaw, Warren Mitchell, Joseph Tomelty, Russell Napier, George A Cooper and Vanda Godsell.

Val Guest speeds the dynamic action nicely as director, and writes the terse, crisp screenplay, based on a now forgotten novel by Maurice Procter. Arthur Grant photographs the movie in the then current style of the British new wave cinema, in widescreen and gritty black and white. The studio work is carried out at Elstree, London. Hammer studios apparently didn’t pay much attention when the unduly sensitive Manchester City authorities complained that it shouldn’t be called Hell Is a City.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3461

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