The Partner ** (1963, Yoko Tani, Guy Doleman, Ewan Roberts, Mark Eden, Anthony Booth, Helen Lindsay) – Classic Movie Review 13,315

The head-scratchingly complicated 1963 Edgar Wallace Mysteries British whodunit film The Partner stars Yoko Tani, Guy Doleman and Ewan Roberts.

Director Gerard Glaister’s 1963 British Edgar Wallace Mysteries whodunit film The Partner stars Yoko Tani, Guy Doleman and Ewan Roberts, and is part of the series of 48 Edgar Wallace Mysteries films made at Merton Park Studios. The  screenplay by John Roddick is based on Edgar Wallace’s 1926 novel A Million Dollar Story.

Guy Doleman stars as London film director Wayne Douglas, who is shooting a film starring Hong Kong imported beauty Lin Siyan (Yoko Tani, who was Japanese) when his dodgy accountant Charles Briers (Noël Johnson) is found murdered in a tank at the studio, though that’s not where he was murdered.

Briers was holding a large sum of money (£300,000) and a contract document as part of a tax-avoidance scheme for Douglas, and was taking them to Lin’s home to sign the document and be able to receive the money at around midnight, planning to swindle Douglas, who drives up to her home that night. Meanwhile Douglas’s wife Helen has been hiring private detective Richard Webb (Mark Eden) to investigate a supposed affair her husband is having with Lin. Then, later, Douglas, who knows Webb is on his case and has been following him, also hires him, but to locate the missing money and document.

The Partner is a complicated, decently plotted whodunit murder mystery, with the advantage (both for the film-makers and audience) that it is largely set at Merton Park Studios, where Wayne Douglas has his office and his W D Productions are operating, and where the film is also made. It is very nice to see round Merton Park Studios.

It is packed full of nasty characters – there’s a bunch of totally worthless folk to try to get interested in – and it clearly has a very jaded view of film directors and the film business. Ewan Roberts’s police Detective Inspector Simons is the one decent character, and he plays him interestingly as a brisk efficient bureaucrat, and none too likeable. That’s good, because the film is interesting, brisk and efficient too, and none too likeable.

There are some odd casting decisions that don’t really pay off. Helen Lindsay doesn’t make much headway in an unsympathetic jealous wife role as film director’s wife Helen Douglas, a too subdued Yoko Tani hardly lights up the screen as the film star femme fatale Lin Siyan, Anthony Booth gives a very weird beatnik-type performance as the film director’s brother in law Buddy Forrester, and Mark Eden seems way too smooth, calm and laid back as the private eye Richard Webb.

Guy Doleman really is the star and main character of the film, and he keeps it downbeat and dour, so he’s credible without being exciting. A film with a film-making background could easily have afforded to be much more extravagant, campy even, and then it would have been much more fun. However, a few witty lines in the rather untidy script help it along, along with Wallace’s usual twisty, convoluted plot, this time so head-scratching that it can’t tie up all the strands of the story or explain the presence of a couple of the characters. Maybe it needed more than 57 minutes.

Whodunits are always a bit of a let-down maybe, even when the guilty party is well concealed as it is here, but it’s just a case of oh, they did it, oh whatever. The Partner could do with a lot more tension, suspense, atmosphere, threat and thrills, though it is entirely adequate and watchable, quite amusing really.

The cast

The cast are Yoko Tani as Lin Siyan, Guy Doleman as Wayne Douglas, Ewan Roberts as Detective Inspector Simons, Mark Eden as Richard Webb, Anthony Booth as Buddy Forrester, Helen Lindsay as Helen Douglas, Noël Johnson as Charles Briers, Denis Holmes as Detective Sergeant Rigby, John Forgeham as Adrian Marlowe, Virginia Wetherell as Karen, Yvette Wyatt as Pam, Norman Scace as Dr Ambrose, John Forbes-Robertson as Alwood, Brian Haines as surgeon, Earl Green as Peter, Neil Wilson as security officer, Guy Standeven as counterhand, and Norma Parnell as day nurse.

New Zealand born actor Guy Doleman (22 November 1923 – 30 January 1996) is known as Count Lippe in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965) and as Colonel Ross in the three Harry Palmer films, The Ipcress File (1965) Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), starring Michael Caine. He also played Number Two in the TV series The Prisoner (1967).

Scottish actor Ewan Roberts (29 April 1914–10 January 1983) played Inspector Ames in the TV series Colonel March of Scotland Yard, starring Boris Karloff, between 1954 and 1956.

The Edgar Wallace Mysteries 

There were 48 films in the British second-feature film series The Edgar Wallace Mysteries, produced at Merton Park Studios for Anglo-Amalgamated and released in cinemas between 1960 and 1965.

Crossroads to Crime (1960) and Seven Keys (1961) were not shot as part of the series but were later included. Urge to Kill (1960) may not originally have been intended as part of the series.

1. Urge to Kill (March 1960)
2. Clue of the Twisted Candle (September 1960)
3. The Malpas Mystery (October 1960)
4. Marriage of Convenience (November 1960)
5. The Man Who Was Nobody (December 1960)
6. Partners in Crime (February 1961)
7. The Clue of the New Pin (February 1961)
8. The Fourth Square (June 1961)
9. Man at the Carlton Tower (July 1961)
10. Clue of the Silver Key (August 1961)
11. Attempt to Kill (September 1961)
12. Man Detained (October 1961)
13. Never Back Losers (December 1961)
14. The Sinister Man (December 1961)
15. Backfire! (February 1962)
16. Candidate for Murder (February 1962)
17. Flat Two (February 1962)
18. The Share Out (February 1962)
19. Number Six (April 1962)
20. Time to Remember (July 1962)
21. Solo for Sparrow (September 1962)
22. Playback (September 1962)
23. Locker Sixty-Nine (September 1962)
24. Death Trap (October 1962)
25. The Set Up (January 1963)
26. Incident at Midnight (January 1963)
27. The £20,000 Kiss (January 1963)
28. On the Run (February 1963)
29. Return to Sender (March 1963)
30. Ricochet (March 1963)
31. The Double (April 1963)
32. To Have and to Hold (July 1963)
33. The Partner (September 1963)
34. Accidental Death (November 1963)
35. Five to One (December 1963)
36. Downfall (January 1964)
37. The Verdict (February 1964)
38. We Shall See (April 1964)
39. The Rivals (May 1964)
40. Who Was Maddox? (June 1964)
41. Face of a Stranger (September 1964)
42. Act of Murder (September 1964)
43. Never Mention Murder (November 1964)
44. The Main Chance (November 1964)
45. Game for Three Losers (April 1965)
46. Change Partners (July 1965)
47. Strangler’s Web (August 1965)
48. Dead Man’s Chest (October 1965)
    © Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,316Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com