October Moth ** (1960, Lana Morris, Lee Patterson) – Classic Movie Review 12,744

The weird 1960 British black and white short second feature drama film October Moth stars Lee Patterson as a mentally unbalanced man in a remote farm who imagines an accident victim is his long-dead mother, while his sister (Lana Morris) tries to get help.

Writer/ director John Kruse’s weird 1960 British black and white short second feature drama film October Moth stars Lana Morris, Lee Patterson, Peter Dyneley, Robert Cawdron, and Sheila Raynor.

October Moth is an odd and unattractive psychological melodrama about paranoid Finlay (Lee Patterson), a mentally unstable young farm worker, who believes a middle-aged motorist (Sheila Raynor) injured in a car crash and brought to his remote Yorkshire farmhouse is his long-dead mother. He holds the unconscious woman in the farmhouse while his terrified sister Molly (Lana Morris) tries to help him, but he sets out to kill the phone engineer (Peter Dyneley) he thinks is his violent dead father, and Molly tries to summon help.

This dour support feature lacks credibility and is done with no special flair or subtlety, and the cast’s performances are not particularly exciting or engaging, though Patterson does deranged quite well. Such difficult material would have to be much better and more convincingly played and written to work really well. However, it scores marks for its originality, and, also on the plus side, technically it’s pretty good, thanks to the noir cinematography by Michael Reed, the music by Humphrey Searle and the editing by Ralph Sheldon.

Reactions to it vary so it may be worth a look on Talking Pictures TV (UK).

The film was made at Beaconsfield Studios by Independent Artists for release in September 1960 by Rank Film Distributors (UK).

The cast are Lana Morris as Molly, Lee Patterson as Finlay, Peter Dyneley as Tom, Robert Cawdron as Police Constable, and Sheila Raynor as the woman.

John Kruse (1921–2004) is best remembered for his work on ITC classic TV series The Saint. Hell Drivers (1957) was his first credited film, based on his own short story and co-scripted with director Cy Endfield. He worked on more than a dozen of films, and wrote many hundreds of episodes for TV shows, including The Avengers, Shoestring, Colditz, The Persuaders!, and The Saint.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,744

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