The Brighton Strangler (1945)

Very Cool!!!

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

The Brighton Strangler does not set out to achieve anything in arduous storytelling, but rather is a cheeky tale that lives in Golden Age "B" movie heaven. Reginald Parker (John Loder) is the lead stage actor in a play called The Brighton Strangler. He has performed the play hundreds of times and has decided he wants to move on because he's played the "Strangler" character for so long. After his final show as the killer, a German blitz bombs the theater almost killing Parker. He is left with a head wound that bungles his mind, leading him to believe he actually is Edward Grey, or The Brighton Strangler. He is then doomed to "act" out his play with innocent people.While the concept is an amusing one and the imagery has some fantastic moments of long stark shadows and hands feeling the rope of a noose, John Loder's performance is just about the most lackluster acting I have ever seen. Everything about him is wooden: his expressions, his tone, and even his posture! It does, however, add to the fun of it all because he looks so silly doing it.Throughout the film there is not really an antagonist opposite of Parker. There is also no suspense drawn from other characters because each victim doesn't figure out what is happening. Parker just tells them what he is going to do. The only person who figures out that something is wrong and then acts upon it doesn't do so until about 10 minutes before the end, probably even less. There is no chase or tension throughout story.While very flawed, The Brighton Strangler is a good fun film that does not try to go beyond its identity. It's a quick easy watch at only 67 minutes. Check it out if you are a fan of old-fashioned pulpy thrillers.Also June Duprez's eyes on the poster are hilarious.

***SPOILERS*** It was the strange combination of playing the murderous Edward Gray in the play the "Brighton Strangler" for 300 straight performances and getting hit on the head by falling debris when a Luftaffa bomb hit the London theater he was performing at ,the Mayfair,that caused actor Reginald Parker, John Loder, to completely lose it. The poor chap started to actually believe that he in fact was the "Brighton Strangler" and in that went out of his way,in far of Brighton, to do his 301th performance as the fictitious killer Edward Gray. But this time it was not an act on Parkers part but the real thing with real victims as well!Predictable since you've seen it all before in Parker playing the "Brighton Srangler" on the stage at the very beginning of the movie and knowing, by Parker telegraphing it all in advance , whats going to happen well before it does in the film! Of course no one really knows what Parker, or Edward Gray as he calls himself, is planning since his play "The Brighton Strangler" wasn't that well know,like say "Hamlet", in Brighton England so his crimes there weren't at first connected with him.It was in London pub when US Army Air Force Let. Bob Carson, Michael St. Angel, saw a poster of the play "The Brighton Strangler" with Parker's photo that he realized that the guy was the person he entrusted to be with his fiancée British WACK April Manby, June Duprez, back in Brighton while he was on his way to the front to battle the Nazis over the skies of Europe! With Gray or Parker going through the numbers,by following the "Brighton Strangler" scrip, and murdering Brighton's Mayor Herman Clive, Ion Wolf, and top cop Inspector W.R. Allison, Milles Mander, that only thing left for him was to finish off Miss Mamby to end his charade as the "Brighton Strangler" and finally call it quits.***SPOILERS*** Somewhat off the wall ending with the deranged Parker's girlfriend, who at first thought that he didn't surviver the Luftwaffe bombing, getting everyone in the movie to applaud her boyfriend's performance just as he was about to strangle April that cause him to lose his concentration and blow his big scene. Parker in him seeing what a good job of acting he did,by all the applause he got, stops strangling April and takes a bow thus falling to his death, backwards, off the roof of the hotel by not realizing how close he was to the ledge of the building! Luckily for April her murder was supposed to take place on New Years Eve which gave her and her fiancée Bob just enough time to come to her rescue! In that when Parker had a chance to murder her earlier in the movie he noticed that Big Ben wasn't ringing in the New Year and then stopped and waited for the right moment, midnight December 31th, for him to murder her!

The was a British film portraying a stage actor who is hit on the head during a bombing in World War II raid on London and then acts the "strangler" in the play he's in, forgetting that he's just an actor. It's an interesting premise. Most of the plot was pretty obvious but there was a twist or two thrown in which kept my attention.However, to be honest, after about 40 minutes my mind started to wander, as the movie just plodded along. A story about a guy with "multiple personalities," so to speak, someone who can't distinguish anymore between fact and fiction, and winds up thinking he's "the Brighton Strangler" should have been a lot more interesting than it was. At 67 total minutes, there is no excuse for this to be a boring movie.John Loder is good in the lead as "Reginald Parker/Edward Gray," but the story doesn't live up to his performance. It just sags, big-time, in that middle section. There are major plot holes in here, too. The guy plays a "famous" actor yet no one recognizes him. I bet if someone re-made this story, it could a chilling one.

John Loder plays Reginald Parker, an actor whose portrayal of a serial killer has made him the toast of London's theater district. During the height of the german blitz Parker has tirelessly played the part to sold out crowds seeking diversion from the horrors of world war 2.After nearly two years of constant work Parker is on the brink of exhaustion. When his wife and friends demand he take a break he agrees grudgingly but only after one last performance for on leave military personnel. That night Parker stays late at the theater to review some last minute additions to the script. As he reads german bombers attack London. A stray bomb strikes the theater causing the roof to collapse on the unfortunate actor. He survives but recieves a nasty blow to the head. The blow gives him partial amnesia allowing him to recall nothing save that of the part he has paractically lived for the last two years.Believing the details of the script are actual memories he comes to believe he is the Brighton Strangler. So it is off to Brighton where he begins hunting down those who resemble his victims from the play.The plot is a rather far fetched and the story sags in the middle. But John Loder's tormented transform from kindly actor to maniacal killer makes the film worth a look.