The Stranger Came Home [The Unholy Four ] ** (1954, Paulette Goddard, William Sylvester, Patrick Holt, Paul Carpenter, Russell Napier) – Classic Movie Review 11,132

‘What was the shock SIN of… THE UNHOLY FOUR’

Director Terence Fisher’s 1954 Hammer Films / Lippert Films British noir black and white mystery thriller The Stranger Came Home [The Unholy Four] is written by Michael Carreras, based on a novel by George Sanders [Leigh Brackett], and stars Paulette Goddard, William Sylvester, Patrick Holt, Paul Carpenter and Russell Napier as Inspector Treherne.

Sylvester plays the amnesiac stranger, Philip Vickers, missing presumed dead for several years, who finally comes home from a Portuguese fishing holiday with three friends four years earlier when he was knocked unconscious and pushed overboard. When one of the three friends turns up dead, Philip finds a new murder is being blamed him.

Unable to remember where he has been or if he did the murder, he finds a woman (Goddard) who can help him: she turns out to be his wife, Angie Vickers.

The Stranger Came Home [The Unholy Four] is a largely unconvincing, muddled mystery thriller, though it is very competently made by one of the best of Hammer’s stable of directors.

Goddard adds some allure and style, but it is one of her last, and least impressive, screen appearances, acting as a rather sad footnote to a notable career in Hollywood. Her star faded in the late 1940s and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949. After a couple of B movies, she left films and went to live in Europe as a wealthy expatriate and married the German novelist Erich Maria Remarque in 1958. She was not seen again in movies till Gli indifferenti (1964), her last feature.

It is made at Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England, UK.

Also in the cast are Alvys Maben, David King-Wood, Patricia Owens, Kay Callard, Jeremy Hawk, Jack Taylor, Kim Mills, Owen Evans, Philip Lennard.

Terence Fisher, runs 80 minutes, is made by Hammer Films and Lippert Films, is released by Exclusive Films (1954) (UK) and Lippert Pictures (1954) (US), is written by Michael Carreras, based on a novel by George Sanders [Leigh Brackett], is shot in black and white by Walter J Harvey [James Harvey], is produced by Michael Carreras, is scored by Leonard Salzedo, Ivor Slaney (composer additional music, uncredited) and Eric Rogers (composer additional music, uncredited), and is designed by J Elder Wills.

The source novel Stranger At Home by George Sanders was ghost-written by Leigh Brackett. Another novel also credited to Sanders, Crime on My Hands, features an amateur detective, similar to Sanders’s Saint and Falcon characters, and was ghost-written by Craig Rice, who wrote two of the Falcon films.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,132

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