The Weapon *** (1956, Steve Cochran, Lizabeth Scott, Herbert Marshall, Nicole Maurey, Jon Whiteley, George Cole) – Classic Movie Review 12,633

The 1956 British film The Weapon offers modest crime melodrama thrills, but it is nicely done and neatly acted, and it rattles along thanks to the able touches of director Val Guest.

The 1956 British suspense film The Weapon offers modest crime melodrama thrills, but it is very nicely done and neatly acted, and it rattles along thanks to the able touches of director Val Guest, who said: ‘It wasn’t a very startling film but it was a good thriller.’

Little Jon Whiteley plays Erik, who is playing with friends in the basement of a bomb-damaged building in London. Erik finds a handgun stuck in a lump of concrete, picks up the gun, it fires accidentally, and he flees, thinking that he has killed his friend, pursued by US Army Captain Mark Andrews (Steve Cochran) and UK police inspector Superintendent Mackenzie (Herbert Marshall).

A policeman tells Erik’s American-born war widow mother Elsa Jenner (Lizabeth Scott) that the boy who was shot is in hospital but alive. It is discovered that the gun was used in a murder of an American serviceman during the war, leading a dangerous criminal to pursue Erik.

It is shot in the East End of London and at Walton Studios on sets by art director John Stoll. Val Guest recalled: ‘We shot all around the bomb sites around St Paul’s Cathedral, an awful lot on location, and some of it on Waterloo Bridge and Lambeth.’ These time-capsule exteriors are haunting images.

It is made by Periclean Productions by producer Hal E Chester, who Guest called ‘a very strange little producer who really knew more about nothing than anyone else’.

Scottish child film actor Jon Whiteley (19 February 1945 – 16 May 2020) appeared in just five films during his brief acting career, starting with Hunted (1952), and it was for his second film, The Kidnappers, that he and Vincent Winter were awarded an Academy Juvenile Award. He appeared in only three more films, including Moonfleet (1953), The Spanish Gardener (1956) and The Weapon (1956), before his film acting career stopped when his mother insisted on him passing the eleven plus exam.

The cast are Steve Cochran as Mark Andrews, Lizabeth Scott as Elsa Jenner, George Cole as Joshua Henry, Herbert Marshall as Superintendent Mackenzie, Nicole Maurey as Vivienne, Jon Whiteley as Erik, Laurence Naismith as Jamison, Stanley Maxted as The Colonel, Denis Shaw as Groggins, John Horsley as Johnson, Fred Johnson as Fitzsimmons, Frazer Hines as Jimmy, Peter Godsell as David, Terry Cooke as Johnny, Basil Dignam, and Richard Goolden.

Guest said: ‘Steve Cochran was a born problem. I was told when we made The Weapon that Lizabeth Scott was a great problem but I didn’t have any problems with her at all. In fact she used to come and confide all her problems to me.’

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,633

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