SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Absolutely Fantastic

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The problem with this film is that the murderer is obvious long before the murder is committed. Until that happens, the film is of little interest, while it then starts stirring with ever increasing tension, forcing your interest never to relax for one moment but actually compelling you to overwhelming empathy with the hardships of John Mills, who is exposed to horrible pressure, just because he is stamped as a mental invalid. His performance dominates the film, while Joan Greenwood is always a revelation. Kay Walsh makes a typical role of hers and sustains it well to the bitter end, while all the other actors also are absolutely convincing. The face of John Mills as Mr Peachy expresses his mind will stay in your mind forever - it's a marvel of a scene. Not all Eric Ambler's characters are completely credible, while the character here realized by John Mills is the more so. The fantastic photo all the way adds to the film's high reputation and quality.

The October man is directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Eric Ambler. It stars John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Edward Chapman, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Catherine Lacey, Adrianne Allen and Felix Aylmer. Music is by William Alwyn and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.Following a bus crash that killed a friends child that he was treating to a day out, Jim Ackland (Mills) suffers a brain injury. During his recuperation it's revealed to him that he is prone to amnesia, and even though he's suicidal over the child's death, he's released back into society. Setting up lodgings at a hotel and back to work as an industrial chemist, Jim is functioning well. That is until he financially helps one of the young lady residents of the hotel and becomes the chief suspect when she winds up murdered in a park. Jim has no recollection of committing the crime, but he was in the park…Pulsing with moody atmospherics, this Brit noir – psychological - thriller showcases the best of John Mills and the higher end of the British noir splinter. It's a post war London that's cloaked in shadowy streets, of parks harbouring spectral mists punctured by bulbous lamps, a train station a foreboding but visually stunning presence. Jim Ackland is suicidal and nursing amnesia, yet the hotel where he lives, itself a relic of a London that time forgot, is full of human beings from different ends of the evolutionary scale. It's not a good place for Jim to be, a cuckoos nest of spiteful, suspicious, vengeful, lonely people, Jim in fact, in spite of his problems, appears to be the only sane one there!There is no great "whodunit" to be solved here, some critics have bizarrely complained that the murderer is too obvious! Bizarre because the makers don't try and hide who it is, the film is firmly interested in the human condition, in how members of society react post a heinous crime, and of course how the afflicted antagonist fights his corner when confronted by hostility and his own mental confusion. Roy Ward Baker, for what was his first direction assignment, is more than up for the job of crafting a noir thriller. He has a good eye for the visual traits that often marry up with human feelings or behaviour, of course having someone of Hillier's class on cinematography duty naturally helps him through his debut production.Splendid entertainment. 8/10

The film begins with John Mills on a bus, trying to entertain a friend's daughter. Suddenly, as the bus nears a train, it loses control and slams into a wall--killing the girl and leaving Mills with a skull injury so severe he was hospitalized for a year. During that time, he became very depressed and tried to kill himself. However, now that the year has passed, he's discharged and the staff is concerned about his ability to make it on the outside.At first, Mills is very tentative around others and tends to keep to himself at the boarding house while working at a local chemical plant. However, over time he seemed to be coming out of his depression and began dating his boss' sister. Life certainly looks good for him when out of the blue, one of the fellow lodgers at the boarding house is murdered. Due to many coincidences he is accused of the crime. With his head injury and past emotional instability he's a natural suspect though he didn't have any reason for killing her.Much of the rest of the film concerns Mills trying in vain to prove his innocence. The problem is that the police think it's an open and shut case and they refuse to take him seriously--leaving him no choice but to go on the run to prove his innocence.There are many excellent twists and turns (particularly when he discovers who the murder is) and the acting is excellent (particularly that of John Mills). Because it didn't take cheap or easy ways out in the plot and kept me guessing, it really impressed me and is a film I'd heartily recommend.By the way, the little girl at the beginning of the film was Mills' real-life daughter, Juliet! Also, note the cinematography as Mills is on the railway bridge--it's quite a beautiful and impressive scene (especially the first time).

A wonderful old black and white British film, that has John Mills suffering from a head injury sustained in a bus crash, is the suspect in a murder mystery, when a girl that he has helped out with some money, has been found dead. Good performances from the whole cast and the audience is kept in suspense up to the final scenes as to weather the murderer will escape.