The Flaw (1955)

One of my all time favorites.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Absolutely the worst movie.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A suave, high living racing car driver called Paul Oliveri (John Bentley) marries the young heiress Monica Crewson (Rona Anderson) much to the chagrin of her friends who believe that he is bad news and can only be after her money. Her lawyer and former lover John Millway (Donald Houston) hires a private eye to keep tabs on him and discovers that he is seeing another woman. Although he has only been married to Monica for little under a year, Oliveri has sponged £20,000 from her to fund his lifestyle and his mistress. But, Millway eventually discovers that Oliveri plans to murder Monica for her fortune estimated to be worth about half a million pounds. He succeeds in convincing her about his suspicions and she leaves him moving into a seaside cottage in Southaven. However, Oliveri knows what Millway has been up to and devises what he believes to be a foolproof way of killing him so that he can carry on working on Monica without any interruptions. He goes to a show kicking up a fuss at the box office so that the staff remember him. He slips out the backdoor and picks Millway up as he leaves his regular game of Bridge and takes him back to his house on the pretext of wanting to discuss a legal matter. He gives him a glass of poisoned whisky and, as he dies, he boasts to his victim about his plan and how he will hide his body in the back of his car covering it with a rug and locking it up in the garage. He will slip back to the show in a taxi and spend the remainder of the evening at a club with friends talking about the show to further his alibi. The next day he will take his body to his boat at Southaven, attach some weights to it and take it out to sea and quietly dispose of it by tossing it overboard in the hope it will never be discovered. In his dying words Millway gasps "There's a flaw", but what is it that could finally give the devious and cunning Oliveri away?This low budget British support feature will be of interest to film buffs because it is an early work by director Terence Fisher who within a year of making this would go on to achieve fame at Hammer with his groundbreaking gothic horror films. Any film directed by Fisher is usually worth watching - even the pre-horror stuff when he was a prolific second feature man. Although the low budget sometimes shows and threatens to undermine the work, it is extremely well acted all round with John Bentley shining as the sinister and suave playboy who marries the beautiful, vulnerable yet sensible Monica so he can get his hands on her money. Rona Anderson who offers an excellent performance as one of her many b-pic heroines plays a character who is completely different to the man she has married so we can see that the relationship will end in tears and the contrast between the two actors is excellent. Even here Fisher's direction is far more sophisticated than what we would usually expect for a second feature and he constructs the build up well giving it genuine suspense. His previous experience as an editor appears to have served him well since he moves the action along at a cracking pace. The plot holds our attention since once Millway is murdered - or is he? - we wonder what or whom will come along to wreck Oliveri's plans. Or will he actually succeed in getting rid of the lovely Monica and laying his hands on all that dough? That maintains our interest and the suspense even though it finally settles for a dodgy b-pic finale - well, sort of - it leaves one or two questions unanswered in the tradition of the most successful thrillers making it more satisfying and a bit less predictable than we might have expected. There is an amusing scene at a nightclub where Oliveri furthers his alibi by talking to his friends about the play he saw in the West End and there is a jazz musician (Gerry Levy) singing a number entitled "You're getting away with murder, but you can't get away from me" in the background, which carries a genuine charge of irony and those lyrics could come back to haunt him later on.

THE FLAW is one in a series of low budget crime thrillers that later Hammer director Terence Fisher made in the 1950s. It's far from his most distinguished work although as a virtual three hander it works reasonably well and at only an hour in length it never outstays its welcome. Fisher's direction adds a little life and style to the proceedings although the plot is very ordinary and simplistic and the outcome easily guessable.John Bentley is cast against type as a womanising racing car driver. The object of his affections is the lovely Rona Anderson, who had quite a career in B-pictures during the '50s; she was in the same year's STOCK CAR, with similar film ingredients, although perhaps is best known for appearing in SCROOGE. Bentley's intentions towards her are less than charitable, so it's a good thing that Donald Houston - playing against type as a friendly family lawyer - is on the case. It's a talky little production without a great deal of action, but it passes the time reasonably well nonetheless.

It seems that one of the stock plot devices of thrillers made in the fifties is for the murderer to set up what he considers to be a cast iron alibi when he commits a murder.In this film it is a trip to the theatre,so one is hardly likely to find anything very original in this film. As he is dying from poison Donald Houston tells him that there is a flaw.Well there usually is otherwise the murderer would not be caught. In this instance there is a twist in the tail,so that the murderer gets his just deserts and his wife gets her real love who is of course Houston. Terence Fisher directs in his unostatious manner and brings the film to its not unexpected conclusion.

Terence Fisher is likely to be remembered for his admirable work at Hammer Studios where he directed the bulk of their Frankenstein pictures ,two memorable entries in the Dracula series and several distinguished one off movies like The Mummy and the definitive Holmes movie The Hound of the Baskervilles .They were marked by their creative and elegant use of colour and some fine art direction . The Flaw is a pre Hammer picture ,a contemporary crime drama shot in lacklustre monochrome with a thin plot and some very routine acting .John Bentley plays a racing driver who marries purely for money and schemes to murder his wife after ensuring he is the sole heir ;out to thwart him is the family lawyer who sees through the scheme and secretly loves the wife himself . Poorly acted and with a perfunctory script this has little to recommend it and the director does stalwart work in sustaining what little grip the movie is ever able to exert