Dreadfully Boring

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This film seems to have been made in the smallest film studio ever.In one scene there are 4actors crammed in what seems to be a broom cupboard..When they take to a boat on the river there is no attempt at back projection,merely a black background.The story is feeble and poorly constructed and doesn't make a great deal of sense.Dennis Price is unable to salvage anything from it.

Scotland Yard is baffled (aren't they always??) by a series of attacks on wealthy women, each of the victims are seen leaving exclusive clubs, they are tracked to their homes where they are then left for dead after being robbed of their valuables. This nifty little crime drama throws the viewer in at the deep end instantly, a woman is murdered, the clock strikes 3 am and a rather nervous man is trying to explain why he was late again to his annoyed girl friend. He goes home when, in the shadowy room, a girl's arm is seen draped over a chair!! Conventionality kicks in and the man is revealed as a policeman and the girl, his sister, who has stayed up to tell him of her engagement to a moody crime writer.Quota quickies had been around since the 1930s as part of a British drive to boost the flagging film industry but after the war, ticket prices dropped in an effort to once again get people back to the cinemas. But the public wanted more and the question was asked "What's on with it"!! A lot of the time cheap films looked exactly what they were but occasionally terrific little movies came along and "Murder at 3am" was one of them.Whilst the cast is a small one, everyone looms as a suspect. Teddy, Joan's fiancé, being a crime writer hits upon a novel approach and the police are willing to listen to any lead!! With each woman seen leaving a different club, by spelling out the first letters of each club, it begins to give the police a clue as to where the killer will strike next - the only trouble is he doesn't!! Inspector Peter Lawton (who is still a suspect in the viewer's eyes as played by a debonair Dennis Price) is wondering - could it be Teddy or even an inside job!! Suddenly one of the survivors identifies a photo slipped into an identikit by an over-zealous constable and the action accelerates.The big surprise for me is that this was Peggy Evan's last film. She was not only in the almost cult "quota quickie" "Penny and the Pownall Case"(1947) but was memorable as Dirk Bogarde's increasingly anxious girl friend in "The Blue Lamp" (1950). These two should have given her a reasonable career but she only made 10 movies. She did live a long life but retired way too early!

Dennis Price stars as a Scotland Yard police inspector who with sidekick Sergeant Rex Garner gets an assignment to find out who is doing a series of murders on women coming home from nightclubs in and around three o'clock in the morning. As it is barely an hour we don't get too much in the way of character development and no real great reason why the killer is doing what he's doing. These B films as they would be called here are called 'quota quickies' on the other side of the pond. Accent on the quickie here because this film sure has a hurried quality to it. The producers just wanted to get this one off the assembly line and before the British movie-going public in a big hurry.Complicating things is the fact that Price has a sister played by Peggy Evans who is going out with Philip Savile who comes under suspicion. Of course there's a real good reason why he's under suspicion, but I'll save that in case one wants to see it.I have to warn you that the copy I rented from Amazon has some horrible sound quality. I hope the public when they saw it in the theaters wasn't similarly inconvenienced.

Inspector Lawton (Dennis Price) and Sgt Todd (Rex Garner) investigate a series of murders, in which well off young women are being attacked and robbed after leaving London's trendy nightclubs in the wee small hours. Lawton's younger sister, Joan (Peggy Evans) is engaged to be married to a hard up novelist called Teddy King (Philip Saville) and Lawton is shocked when the evidence points to him as being the killer. However, in a showdown at the docks, it transpires that Teddy has a twin brother who turns out to be the culprit.Overall, Murder At 3AM is a competent British b-pic that more than served its purpose at the time - to fill the lower half of the double bill and to enable British studios to fill their quota of movies, which The Cinematograph Act of 1927 passed by parliament stated they had to produce. Films like this became known as quota-quickies for that reason and the greater majority of them had a reputation for being awful but from time to time you did get the odd gem that sometimes outshone the main feature. This particular film was released as the supporting feature to Genevieve in 1953. I remember reading a review for this film somewhere stating that it was among the worst of these films made at that time but having seen it I would say that it was competent and entertaining if only in an undemanding way. Mainly because the story is simply your run-of-the-mill murder mystery and there is nothing for which the film can claim any originality and the motive behind the crimes when it comes leaves you thinking "Yeah so what?" I was attracted to it because of the presence of the late but great Dennis Price who sadly gets very little to do here in the role of a Scotland Yard detective but then again the film did not really demand much. The film's best performance comes from Leonard Sharp in a light comedy relief role as an elderly sailor who assists Lawton in tracking down the killer's hideout on the docks. But Old Skip is only willing to help when he is bribed with brandy from Sgt Lawton's hip flask who is annoyed when at the end of it he has none left for himself. The film was directed by quota-quickie specialist, Francis Searle, who keeps the proceedings moving along at a brisk pace ensuring that the audience was kept mildly entertained for the hour and it does not looked as rushed as a number of these pictures all too often did.