Midnight Lace (1960)

Filled with Hitchcock alumni - Doris Day from The Man Who Knew Too Much and John Williams from Dial M For Murder, but alongside Rex Harrison, not James Stewart or Cary Grant - and about an American woman (Day), newly married and in London, in distress after she starts being stalked by a disembodied voice - first in a pea soup London fog, atmospherically, and then over a series of phone calls - this thriller directed by David Miller really feels like a classic Hitchcock: London, too, with its double deckers, phone boxes, opera performances, and pubs, and while thriller fans will know where it's heading, there are a few well-handled surprises in the end.

★★★★☆

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Long Dark Hall (1951)

We know from the outset Rex Harrison's Arthur Groome, a married man, didn't kill his 'bit on the side' - one of those disorganised serial killers, a starey laneway night dweller, did - so this isn't a mystery and instead thrills are supposed to come from the court case that makes up most of the movie (filmed in London's Old Bailey) where everything is stacked against our "wrong man", but the movie also wants to be a character study of Groome's spurned but devoted wife - interesting, well-acted, but hardly thrilling - and the movie ends quite abruptly, almost as if everyone involved - the serial killer, the judge, the journalists, the actors,the audience - all simply got fed up with the dreary situation and suddenly wants it over.

★★☆☆☆

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